From Ms Allum

I extend everyone a warm welcome to the start of Term 4 – I hope the holidays offered an opportunity for you to rejuvenate.

We marked the start of the Term by officially inducting our 2024/2025 House Officials at Monday’s assembly. Every girl from Kindergarten – Year 12 is a member of one of the Six Houses: Badham, Barton, Beck, Christian, Docker and Langley. The Houses were established 31 years after the start of the school in 1926 under Headmistress Miss Wilkinson. The intent of the Houses was to “have a profound effect on the development of our school” increasing “enthusiasm in work and sport, we look forward to much friendly rivalry between the Houses.” I think Miss Wilkinson would be heartened and proud that almost 100 years later, Houses continue to be the cornerstone of excellence, respect, and friendship at SCEGGS.

Over the next 12 months the House Officials will lead their peers in Inter-House competitions in Sports, Music, Drama, Debating and other activities. They will model service leadership, be agents of change and impact and continue the friendly House rivalry of their predecessors.

Congratulations to our 2024/2025 House Officials!

This week also saw the start of the HSC written examinations. We wish the Class of 2024 well and encourage them to remain confident in their preparations, hard work and diligence in this final chapter of their secondary school journey.

Best wishes for a wonderful Term 4 everyone!

Jenny Allum
Head of School

Help Our Community Stay Healthy

Although the cooler months are behind us, it is important that we all use a commonsense approach to health and safety guidelines to help reduce the risk of transmission of illnesses throughout our school community this term.

NSW Health has indicated that there is a high incidence of several illnesses in the broader community at the moment:

• Whooping Cough (or pertussis)
• Respiratory illnesses, such as ‘walking pneumonia’, COVID and RSV
• … and a nasty viral gastroenteritis on the rise too!

Help Reduce the Spread

To reduce the spread of all illnesses, it is important that all staff and students:

• Wash your hands thoroughly and often with soap and running water for at least 20 seconds and dry them with a clean towel.
• Stay at home when sick with acute symptoms of any of these illnesses (such as a runny nose, sore throat, fever, cough, vomiting, diarrhoea etc)
• Cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue and sneeze into your elbow instead of your hands.
• Avoid touching eyes, nose or mouth.

If your daughter is unwell, please notify the school and include any relevant information in the absence note you provide. This can be submitted directly via the SCEGGS App or by emailing absences.

Further information about all of these is available from NSW Health, including information about recommended vaccinations can be found here.

Rest is Best

Health advice is that staff and students who are sick should always stay home to rest and recover properly. This allows people to look after themselves and it avoids putting others at risk of getting sick too.

We all have an important part to play, so please help us keep everyone in our community as safe and well as possible this term!

Holly Gyton
Deputy Head of School

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award

Time is the longest distance between two places.
– Tennessee Williams

The last term has flown past (along with the holidays), and we are left with seven weeks until it’s all over. The departure of Year 12 has set off a vast game of musical chairs as students jockey for coveted seating areas at recess and lunch and every group in the school starts thinking about the year they will be graduating into, moving into new classrooms, sports teams, choirs, bands and Leadership positions.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award program is also experiencing transitions as many participants are preparing to advance to the next level of the Award. Bronze students are setting their sights on Silver, while Silver completers are gearing up for the challenge of Gold. Year 11 and 12 Gold completers who have finished their Adventurous Journeys are now in “logging” mode, finalising activities and chasing up Assessor reports. Year 8 students can anticipate joining this enriching program following their assessment period, where they will learn about its benefits during a Year Meeting.

The past term saw great success, with four Bronze and one Silver Adventurous Journey completed during the school term. During the holidays, we experimented with a new “Combo” Gold format, where candidates completed six consecutive days of bushwalking rather than two separate four-day trips.  There are pros and cons – but at least initially our candidates seem to have a positive reaction. Perhaps six straight days of bad weather would illicit different opinions. We also continued to break new ground by running our third inclusive “walk and roll” expeditions, including a student completing the Adventurous Journey by wheelchair. This format allows the team to journey together when possible, split into groups for different terrain types, then reunite for camping – fostering strong camaraderie. Congratulations to all our wonderful students, you’re always a delight to be with in the outdoors, and we are rewarded by your achievements.

Spring too will soon be but a memory, as the sun climbs and bakes us earlier and longer through the day. We have two remaining Silver Adventurous Journeys in November, so we’re looking forward to some warmth, waterfalls and epic wandering in the Blue Mountains.

A small request to all our students that hiked this year – we are declaring a moratorium for any camping equipment that you may have borrowed and not yet returned – please just drop it off in the upstairs enclave outside the PDHPE/Sport Department, so that it may be used and enjoyed by your friends and peers this year and next.

Looking forward to this last term of 2024.

Joanne Bower (Award Leader)
Doric Swain (Expedition Supervisor)

Year 11 Roughtober Sleepout

Over 60 of our Year 11 students have signed up this year to participate in the Youth Roughtober Sleepout, on Friday 18 October. This is an awareness and fundraising event for Rough Edges, a drop in café for people who are living in vulnerable and at-risk situations to have a place where they can belong, have access to food, and develop a sense of community with other people each night. Rough Edges relies very much on the fundraising efforts to sustain its vital services in Darlinghurst. You can read about the ways in which this service helps people rebuild their lives and treat patrons with dignity through the love and care shown by those serving and volunteering at the café here. 

We hope that you will help support our Year 11s who are sleeping rough at St John’s in Darlinghurst through a donation to our SCEGGS Darlinghurst Roughtober fundraiser page.

We thank you for your generosity and support of this important and life changing service. I am very proud of the Year 11’s who have embraced this fundraising initiative so enthusiastically and have shown great commitment to giving back to our local community.

Dynielle Whitney
Head of Religious Education & Social Justice Coordinator

Year 7 – 10 Creative Writing Speech Night Prizes

Each year SCEGGS invites students in Years 7 – 10 to submit their creative fiction and poetry writing into the Betty Behan Memorial Prize for Short Story and Gwen Cockell Prize for Creative Writing (awarded for Poetry). Named in honour of an old girl and former English teacher, these prizes are awarded at Speech Night and are a wonderful way of celebrating the writing of our students. Winning entries and extracts of commended pieces of work are also published each year in the Lux magazine.

Students are invited to submit work that they have completed in class, or which they have worked on independently over the year. Each year we are thrilled to have so many entries from the talented writers at SCEGGS. The closing date for entries is Term 4 Week 2 (Friday 25 October).

Students can follow the link here to read the instructions, upload their work and read winning entries from previous years.

Jenny Bean 
Head of English

Sport News

Commitment to SCEGGS Co-Curricular Sport

Regular physical activity is an essential part of promoting positive health and well-being. Building relationships, fostering sportsmanship and teamwork is another element to co-curricular sport. We expect full commitment to all co-curricular sporting activities at SCEGGS. Students should be respectful of the impact that any absence has on team sport: their teammates, the opposition, the coach, and the reputation of the school.

Students are expected to be fully committed and attend all scheduled training sessions and matches.

All absences must be communicated to the PDHPE Department using the following guidelines:

• Parents and guardians are to request written permission for leave from Ms Allum (Secondary) or Mrs Dempsey (Primary) at least a week in advance from a sporting fixture e.g. Year 12 student attending a University Open Day
• If a student is sick on a Saturday, a parent/guardian must email or message the relevant coach and Sport Co-ordinator, or Director of Sport, explaining the absence as soon as possible.
• If a student is unable to attend a training session, the student, or a parent, is to notify the relevant Sports Co-ordinator. 
• In case of a clash with school co-curricular activities e.g. Musicale, Sports Training, Duke of Ed Hike, the student is to liaise with both Co-ordinators to negotiate an acceptable outcome.

Failure to adhere to the above guidelines in the secondary school will result in:

• A detention for any unexplained absences from a competition match.
• A penalty point for any unexplained absence from training.
• A penalty point for late arrival to more than 2 training sessions or matches in the same term.

If a student’s attendance is deemed unsatisfactory, they will be ineligible for house points and recognition on reports.

Halloween – Thursday October 31

A reminder that it is compulsory to attend all sports training on the afternoon of Halloween. Going Trick or Treating is not a valid excuse to miss your sports training.

Students Driving to Sport

As more of our students are gaining their driver’s licences, it is timely to remind everyone that no student is to drive another student to or from school, sports training sessions or matches, or any other co-curricular event or activity.

Due to safety concerns, particularly those associated with inexperienced drivers, we strongly encourage all students to use the buses provided to and from sporting venues.

Please refer to page 18 of the SCEGGS School Diary.

Sailing at SCEGGS

The SCEGGS Sailing program is back up and running in Term 4. Students sail out of Woollahra Sailing Club on Monday afternoons. Images below are some of our students in Term 3 learning to Sailboard close to the shore due to the winds being too strong to head out in the boats on this day. In the event of heavy rain, lessons still go ahead as the club conducts dry land training in the Clubhouse.

SCEGGS at Play

Do you have any sporting news or photos to share in the Green Gate?

We love seeing our students being active and want to celebrate their passion and enjoyment amongst the SCEGGS community. Please send in any action shots from the weekend and any other interesting sporting highlights to Alison Gowan.

SCEGGS Training sessions before and after school plus Saturday Sport

Any cancellations or adjustments will be made in Clipboard and families will receive a notification or email when changes are made. Please ensure you have notifications enabled.

All Clipboard notifications will now come through the SCEGGS Mobile App too, so if you have been receiving notifications from Clipboard (eg when sport is cancelled due to wet weather), you will need to download the SCEGGS Mobile App to ensure that you continue to receive these push notifications.

IGSA Fixtures, Results and Wet Weather

The IGSA website and platform for accessing wet weather, and team results can be found here.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact myself on 9052 2721 or 0418 491 521.

Alison Gowan
Director of Sport

Primary Sport News

Welcome to Term 4

Saturday Sport

As we enter the final stretch, we look forward to another term filled with lots of sports and activities. We are hopeful that the weather is kind to us over the term to make the most of the exciting term that we have ahead!

Best of luck to our Saturday Sports Teams in the IPSHA Competition that will go ahead this weekend, participating in Basketball and Tennis. We are excited to hear all the results from the weekend ahead.

For IPSHA Basketball, a reminder that Year 4 and 5 will train at Moore Park and Year 6 will train at school, in the Sports Hall, each week.

Please check Clipboard for training and game times and locations. Also, a reminder that students need to be at their game ready to start the warmup 30 minutes before the scheduled start time.

Sport Reminders

• As we enter Term 4 and the temperature increases, please be aware that hats are an expectation for students participating in certain activities. This is particularly the case for those playing tennis! Soft brim caps are available for purchase for $35. If you would like your daughter to have one, then please let me know.
• If your daughter cannot make an afterschool activity anytime throughout the term, please contact the relevant sport convenor or me.
• Our priority is to ensure your daughter is safe; ensuring we know that she will not be attending an afterschool activity is one step in making this possible. If your daughter is not able to attend, this has an impact on our training, staffing and venue bookings. Your help in making this process as smooth as possible is appreciated!
• The Year 2-6 Swimming Carnival is fast approaching and will take place on Monday 18 November at Lane Cove Aquatic Leisure Centre. Stay tuned for more information over the coming weeks!

Upcoming Dates

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Mr Adrian Hammond
Primary Sports Coordinator

Primary & Secondary Music

Special Project Orchestra

Our Special Project Orchestra was formed earlier in the year to allow more performance opportunities for a greater number of musicians. We were very pleased to include three talented Primary school students in this project, Aisling Blackburn (Year 5) and Alexandra Millin and Anara Murugesan (Year 6 ) as well as students from the Secondary School. The Special Project Orchestra’s first performance for the year was at the Final Assembly of Term 3. They performed Endless Summer by Kara Williams, conducted by Mrs Anne Sweeney. Thank you to all involved. The second performance for the Special Project Orchestra will be Musicale 4, where Mr Tierney will conduct Saint-Saens’ Bachannale.

Watch the video of the performance here.

AMEB Achievements

Congratulations to the following students who completed AMEB exams recently.

Band Program Overview

View the program for Term 4 here.

AUSTA Spring String Festival

The Australian String Teachers’ Association (AUSTA) NSW String Festival is an event designed to give young string players from Kindergarten to Year 12 the opportunity to perform in friendly, non-competitive and supportive environment. Participants are invited to play one piece either solo or with an accompanist to the best of their ability. Participants will play one by one in a small group with other players of a similar age and ability.

Unlike an eisteddfod there are no section winners and no first or second places. All participants will leave with a Certificate of Participation, a trophy and an adjudicators report. Please enrol using this link before Sunday 20 October.

Musicale 4

Musicale 4 will be held on Wednesday 6 November in the SCEGGS Great Hall.

The Primary Concert will run from 5.00 pm – 5.45 pm (approximately) and the Secondary Concert from 6.30pm – 7.30pm (approximately).

Primary Ensembles performing at the 5.00pm Concert

Training Band, Bugles’ Band, Primary Rock Band, Primary Percussion Ensemble, Cantare, Sinfonietta, Chamber Strings and Primary String Octet.

Secondary Ensembles performing at the 6.30pm Concert

Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Clarion Concert Band, Year 9 Rock Band (Electric Fuse), Secondary Jazz Combo, Van Reyk Percussion Ensemble, Contemporary Strings, Lux Strings and Special Project Orchestra (Project 2).

Rehearsals

All rehearsal information can be viewed on Clipboard. Please check rehearsal venues in the lead-up to the concert as we try to schedule at least one Great Hall rehearsal for each group.

National Choral School

Congratulations to Josie Grayden and Eva Ancher in Year 9 who have both been chosen to participate in the prestigious Gondwana National Choral School in January 2025.  After successfully completing a rigorous audition process that takes applications from young choral singers across all over Australia, Josie writes

“As someone who has been singing as long as they can remember, this is a tremendous opportunity, and one that I am very excited for. Gondwana Choirs perform both nationally and internationally, and Gondwana Voices are Australia’s leading choir for young people aged 10-17. I would highly recommend applying in future years as this promises to be a great experience for those who love singing, or just enjoy being in choir.”

Beyond the Green Gate

We love hearing about ways our musicians are involved in music-making outside of school. Please send details to Heidi Jones.

Clipboard

All co-curricular music ensemble schedules are now available on Clipboard. If you haven’t set this up yet, please follow the provided instructions. For any issues with Clipboard set-up, contact our Music Administration Assistant Miss Alice Kotowicz.

Upcoming Events:

Term 4

Heidi Jones
Head of Music (Co-curricular)

Visual Arts

Aurelia Cortese (Year 11) has been awarded a significant accolade for her work in the Waverley Woollahra 9 x 5 Landscape Prize. Aurelia was awarded Highly Commended, 1 of only 3 prizes available to entrants. To be shortlisted for this prize is in itself an outstanding achievement as entries are drawn from across the country and from painters 16 years and older, most of whom are adult and established.

Well done Aurelia!

Youth Photographic Award & Short Film Prize 2024

We are delighted to invite members of the SCEGGS community to the awards presentation and official opening of the Woollahra 2024 Youth Photographic Award and Short Film Prize, to be held on Thursday 24 October, 5pm-7pm, at Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf. We have had 11 students selected to exhibit their work in this prestigious exhibition. Please see the invitation below.

We look forward to seeing you at this special event.

Kindly RSVP to Redleaf Gallery here by Monday 21 October.

Banner Acknowledgement: This week’s banner is Aurelia Cortese’s landscape titled Culburra Beach.

Heidi Jackson
Head of Visual Arts

Second-hand Textbooks

SCEGGS has partnered with the Sustainable School Shop to provide families access to second-hand textbooks.

Sustainable School Shop have preloaded items specific to our school onto their site. This makes it super easy to list your items for sale and to buy items.

See all the second-hand textbooks for sale here.

Register and list your items for sale, you will be:

• recycling items – great for our environment
• helping & meeting other families in our school
• making and saving money by buying and selling

Login or Register here.

Claire Reid
School Shop Manager

Yirranma Place Open Day

All from the SCEGGS community are invited to come along and look inside the beautifully restored building on Liverpool Street and visit the Too Good not-for-profit cafe inside.

It is also an opportunity to visit this philanthropy precinct where charities and community groups can collaborate.

For more details please contact Georgia or Camilla.