From the Principal

Learning from amazing women – join us for breakfast with Gladys Berejiklian!

We are looking forward to hosting a very special event next week – a first for Pymble, in fact. Our inaugural Centre of Excellence Breakfast is the first in a series of free before-school events hosted under the banner of our new Centre of Excellence, and we are thrilled to welcome the former NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, as our inaugural guest speaker. Currently the Managing Director, Enterprise and Business, at Optus, Ms Berejiklian will be interviewed by our Academic Prefects, Eloise Kinchington and Caitlyn Tan in Year 12, who have an impressive list of questions ready to pose.

The Centre of Excellence and its associated events and programs are designed to inspire and enhance learning opportunities for all students across the College. While still very much in its infancy, the centre aims to nurture students’ unique gifts and talents to enable them to reach their full learning potential. In recognition of the diverse faces of learning, there will be multiple entry points for interested students, along with a research-based Talent Development Program to sufficiently challenge students and equip them with the knowledge, training, support and skills they require to develop expertise in their chosen field. 

Tickets to this event are booking quickly and the booking link will close when the Gillian Moore Centre for Performing Arts reaches capacity, so be sure to reserve your tickets today.

On the topic of events, please accept my heartfelt thanks to all the parents and carers who have supported College events during the past week or two – and there have been several big ones, including our Mother’s Day morning tea, the Junior School Family Fun Day and our flagship Alumni Networking evening at KPMG last week. It is a source of enormous pride that our Pymble family always shows up with positivity and joy to ensure our events are successful and continue to do what they are designed to do, which is to give back to our community and support the wholistic development of our girls. Events such as these are also a wonderful way to connect and learn more about one another.

I am delighted to say student attendance was also up for our Secondary Athletics Carnival today and, for those who did not come, there is always next year to lean into the best version of yourself and turn up to support your peers.

Real-world learning on campus

Real-world learning is an important component of the educational experience at Pymble, combining with our robust subject curricula to provide engaging and memorable lessons about how different communities live, work and function. So, when we take our strategic intent to increase STEM learning across the College, multiple it by an on-site example of engineering and construction, and then raise it to the power of an experienced Project Director, the result is unlimited new opportunities to broaden our girls’ learning and understanding of the world.

Our new Junior School Administration Hub is now five months into the building phase and on schedule for the grand opening in September, which is very exciting. The building sits between our K-2 precinct and our current Junior School Administration building and Years 3 to 6 classrooms and will become the central hub of our combined K-6 Junior School in just a few months.

As work progresses, our Junior School girls are benefiting from hands-on lessons in engineering and construction from our ‪Project Director of Master Planning and Property Development, Mr Greg Hastie. Mr Greg, as the students call him, started with us in 2022, bringing to Pymble 25 years of experience as a Quantity Surveyor along with a vision to involve our students in this important phase of our history by using the works-in-progress as real-world classrooms and lesson-planning inspiration.

This year, Mr Greg has led a three-part project with our Junior School STEM club (for girls in Years 3 to 6) to help them understand how construction projects work, the properties of concrete and how to mix their own. Other lessons in the field include speaking to Year 2 about water collection, conservation and drainage for their STEM project in Term 1, helping Year 4 investigate the properties of materials used in construction as part of their Science learning, and collaborating with Year 5 students undertaking their Mathematical Association of NSW enrichment project to calculate the area of the Year 5 roof as they consider solar energy as a sustainable option for the College.

The concrete made by our STEM club students is now being turned into a sculpture by these girls to represent their interpretation of inclusivity, and our Head of Junior School, Mrs Brown, is hopeful this collaborative artwork can ultimately be installed outside the new Junior School Administration Hub.

More than a little bemused by the ‘rock star status’ he has in the Junior School for his engaging and interactive lessons, Mr Greg is impressed with the girls’ curiosity and questions in the field.

“The girls are so engaged and so bright – they ask me questions about things I haven’t thought about in years, such as why is there a depression at the top of each brick?

“Everything about this build is being done with the students’ safety, learning and benefit at top of mind. If we can get one student from Pymble to go into the construction industry as a result of these hands-on learning opportunities, that’s a win,” Mr Greg says.

Thank you, Mr Greg, for giving your time and sharing your expertise with our students on top of doing a stellar job of overseeing the construction of our buildings of the future. It’s wonderful to see the innovative and varied ways our specialists and teachers continue to build exciting new learning opportunities at Pymble.

PS. For those who are wondering, the depression in each brick holds more mortar to lock it in securely and also makes it easier for bricklayers to pick up and hold each brick while they work. 😊

Dr Kate Hadwen, Principal