̽»¨ÊÓƵ

High Notes, Vol 27 No 21, July 24 2026

From the Principal

Welcome back to Term 3

Welcome back to Term 3 – a term when we reach out to parents with parent teacher nights and information evenings. Students in transition from Year 8 to 9, 9 to 10 and 10 to 11, need to be informed about how curriculum will be delivered for 2027 and what their options might be. It is a time for Year 12 to prepare and test themselves at the Trial HSC. During Term 3, winter sport culminates in finals for rifle shooting, cross country and fencing and final fixtures for football, volleyball and rugby. The Regional CHS athletics competition is held. Students make transitions to summer sport and GPS athletics competition. In late September we finalise elective preferences and farewell the Class of 2026.

Staff Changes

We welcome Ms Henny Shah who will be filling in for Ms Kety Manolios in Science. I will be on leave from August 10 until the end of term.

High Talent

Congratulations to all our fencers who competed in the Australian Schools Senior Fencing Championships in Melbourne during the holidays. Our senior foil team (Benjamin Dang 12R, Tom Ye 11T, Lyndon Chow 12E and Xavier Xie 9T) won silver. Our senior epee team secured the gold medal - Ben Wu 12F, Daniel Zhu 11R, Oscar Lee 10M and Lucas Wang 12 R). Our senior Sabre team won gold – (Ethan Li 12F, Oliver Xie11R, Jio Oh 11F, and Ryan Zhao 10E) and silver (Kevin Yin 10T, Kenzie Yuan 11S, Justin Lee 9M, and Henry Yang 10T). In individual events, Ethan Li and Oliver Xie earned equal bronze in sabre. In the senior epee competition, Benjamin Wu won equal bronze and was awarded the inaugural Matthew Baker Fencing Prize for 2026, by the school.

Good luck to all our Year 11 and 12 Olympiad Competitors in Science who are sitting examinations next week - physics on Monday (13 entrants), biology on Tuesday with 4 and chemistry on Thursday with 11. These are prestigious competitions in which being invited to compete is a worthy academic achievement.

Well done to the boys in the Full-Bore Rifle Shooting Team who had a clean sweep (1st, 2nd and 3rd) in the Fiona Reynolds Memorial All Schools Target Rifle Shooting Competition Teams event last weekend. Individual aggregate results – Lachlan Yuen 3rd, Ethan Trinh 4th, Tristan Dean 5th.

It is great to receive positive feedback about our volunteer student parking attendants! One customer emailed me… ‘I am writing to you to commend the students and staff member who were manning the entry of the car park last Friday night, July 17, at around 6:50pm. As the Sydney Swans and Sydney Roosters were playing that night, you can only imagine the traffic chaos, with cars banked up Cleveland Street. When our car finally arrived at the car park entry, your students and staff member were so calm and well-mannered and "on top of matters", despite the realistic pressures. Your students and teachers should be commended on how well they manage the processes and procedures of the car park- on such busy nights...   ‘Congratulations to all involved!

Staff Development Day

We started off the term with a deep dive into Artificial Intelligence. Led by Mr Jeremy Ohlback and Mr Brett Jackson, the school has developed a Generative AI Policy. The rationale for a school policy and the details about the policy, were discussed in an extended, varied, clear and well-received presentation by Mr Jackson. AI tools are of variable quality. The school endorses the use of NSWEduChat by staff and students. A list of permissive uses and prohibitions in the policy was discussed, along with an assessment of the ethical implications of AI usage against the yardstick of our school values. The staff were recommended to employ the DOE’s 5 levels of AI use when giving instructions to students about the permitted use of Al in tasks.

These instructions are: no use of AI; editing assistance using AI; AI assistance with ideas and planning; completion of a part of the final task; full AI use to generate final content. academic integrity, accountability and monitoring, data privacy and ethics and wellbeing. This rubric is a useful tool for establishing the context of the task to be attempted. In the second session, staff understanding of AI tools and uses was deepened by a self-directed session during which two MyPL modules were completed from four options – academic integrity, accountability and monitoring, data privacy and ethics and wellbeing.
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal