From the Principal

Hello from all of us here at Pymble.

Thank you for your continued interest in staying up to date with life at the College. We know that each student and her family have different reasons for selecting a school, and our mission is to provide an educational experience that allows all our learners to thrive. That’s the beauty of choosing a big and well-resourced school. Pymble is a place where your daughter will be supported and enabled to shine in the subjects, sports, creative and performing arts groups and activities or any of the other myriad opportunities on offer to make her heart sing and to provide a pathway to where she aspires to be.

From Pymble to Paris

Speaking of pathways, you may have seen the news that Pymble has been designated by the Australian Olympic Committee as an Olympic Pathway School. We are delighted to be the only independent school in Australia to be recognised in this way.

Like all significant achievements, this is something we have been working towards for some time now and the culmination of a great deal of hard work behind the scenes. The College had to meet a set of specific criteria to achieve this recognition, including having a well-established elite athlete support program and performance partnerships with a minimum number of state or national sporting bodies – which we exceed. Essentially, these partnerships enable us to work closely with the organisations’ elite coaches and experts to develop our coaching and training programs and create the ideal journey of athletic development for our students in any of the 21 Olympic sports we have on offer.

Being an Olympic Pathway School also allows us to develop a rapport with the Australian Olympic Committee and other professional sporting bodies both here and abroad, all of which combines to provide a life-changing opportunity for our athletes who have their sights set on the world stage.

There are two key priorities for us when we consider sport at Pymble: to have as many students participating as possible at whatever level works for them; and to provide excellent development and pathways opportunities for students for whom sport is their ‘thing’.

Our Learning Philosophy Statement

Of course, we understand academic achievement is high on the list of reasons parents choose to send their daughters to Pymble. This year, our teaching staff across all areas of the College have been collaborating on a document that captures the essence of teaching and learning at Pymble and what sets our practice apart from other schools. We have called this document our Learning Philosophy Statement, which we warmly invite you to read at your leisure.

As a non-selective school, we are incredibly proud of the consistently high standard of academic achievement and commitment to learning among students of all ages, stages and abilities.

In Term 2, we were excited to see the release of preliminary NAPLAN results for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. We are delighted with the performance of Pymble students across all four year-groups and acknowledge the following achievements in the Reading, Numeracy, Grammar, and Punctuation and Spelling tasks:

• 95% or more of students in Years 3 and 5 are categorised as ‘strong’ or ‘exceeding’ in each of the four tests. 

• 90% or more of students in Years 7 and 9 are categorised as ‘strong’ or ‘exceeding’ in each of the four tests. 

In the Writing task:

• More than 90% of students in Years 7 and 9 are categorised as Exceeding or Strong.
• 100% of Years 3 and 5 are categorised as Exceeding or Strong.

On a different measurement scale, our Futures Department recently compiled a report on tertiary pathway and university offers received by our 2023 graduates. Our cohort of 275 students received 781 offers from tertiary institutions across Australia, interstate and overseas. Of these, 300 were early offers directly from the institution. We also had 38 students apply to study overseas. As a result, the team is busy working to strengthen our relationships with international universities to ensure our students are well-positioned for international offers and preferenced for scholarship placements, both nationally and globally.

Our comprehensive summary of HSC highlights can also be reviewed here.

We look forward to the release of more NAPLAN data early in Term 3 and acknowledge the excellent work of our outstanding teachers, students and their families at Pymble. We firmly believe the most successful examples of academic learning and achievement stem from this three-way partnership, where all parties are committed to the development of influential and compassionate young women – today, tomorrow and in their bright, purposeful futures.  

Dr Kate Hadwen
Principal