From the Principal – Who should you call?

As you have no doubt discovered, MLC School is a complex organisation. For this reason, I thought it important to outline some of the roles and responsibilities and to provide guidelines that will assist you to contact those who can resolve any matters as quickly as possible.

As a general guide, your first contact should be with the person closest to the concern.

For academic matters this will be your daughter’s class or subject teacher.

This is an important first step as the teacher will usually be able to provide solutions or suggestions to address the concern and may also have insight into the situation of which you are unaware.

In the Senior School, if an academic matter remains unresolved, the Head of Department should be contacted.

If you are concerned about your daughter’s wellbeing, in the Junior School the class teacher is once again your first point of contact. In the Senior School, the Heads of Year will be able to assist.

The Junior School and Senior School have Deputy Heads of School with specific responsibilities for Academic and Pastoral/ Wellbeing leadership. They are involved in managing more complex or unresolved matters and will provide support and expert advice to their teams and to parents and carers as required.

The Heads of School, Daniel Sandral (Junior School) and Joanna Graffen (Senior School), are responsible for the day-to-day management of all aspects of their respective schools and more serious or unresolved matters should be escalated to them.

There are also Executive staff with whole school roles. They include Deputy Principal Melissa Boyd who has responsibility for of all aspects of whole school operations (including co-curricular sport and music) and student wellbeing. Linda Emms, as Head of Learning and Teaching, is responsible for the quality of pedagogy and learning in every classroom and the associated operational requirements.

As well as being visible and available to members of the MLC School community, my role is to be focused on the future. Working closely with the School Council, I am responsible for ensuring that the planned strategy is realised; that our approach to risk and compliance are best practice; that we plan for the future by carefully managing enrolment numbers; that we are regularly reviewing our masterplan; working with the Business Manager to ensure that we have the capacity to build new facilities and upgrade our current ones; and to ensure that we are up to date with current research and understandings in education and school operations. Representing the best interests of MLC School, girls’ education and independent school education is also key and, for this reason, I serve on several boards and regularly attend meetings where this representation is needed.

– Lisa Moloney
Principal