From the Principal

Hello from our growing Pymble family.

It is always such a joy to welcome new Pymble girls to the College. At the beginning of the year, we opened our arms to 198 new students in the Junior School and 156 in the Secondary School. Our newest members of the family include 36 new Boarders, including several siblings of girls we already know and love, and those who hail from as nearby as Sydney, all over regional NSW and as far away as Dubai, Hong Kong, Germany and Vietnam. Each girl brings her own unique personality, gifts and attributes, and we are delighted she has chosen to join our family. For those students commencing in Term 2, we can’t wait to get to know you too.

While it is exciting to welcome new people into our Pymble family, our Board has set caps on year groups to ensure each student is known, valued and cared for. We have all the benefits of being big, especially from a resourcing perspective, while ensuring each student can find her place and flourish in this remarkable environment. As we often say – if you can dream it, you can do it at Pymble!

Let’s get creative! Dream. Think. Make it happen

At the start of each school year, I like to set an overall theme to inspire our students and staff. In 2022, our theme is: Let’s get creative! Dream. Think. Make it happen.

Each term we will be encouraging our girls to think outside the square to re-imagine and re-configure one aspect of their life to better support their academic and co-curricular learning. In Term 1, we focused on getting creative to be our best selves.

The idea is to pick one habit or behaviour and engineer a new and improved way of doing it until a more self-fulfilling and empowering habit is made. It’s about encouraging our whole school community to think creatively in order to disrupt our unhelpful habits, make new ones and, ultimately, feel and function better.

There’s another important component to this message. This is now our third year of living and dealing with COVID-19 and I feel a deep sense of responsibility to focus on a bright future and things that are within our control. Throughout 2022, we will continue to inspire new ways to bring creativity, hope and joy into the lives of our Pymble family.

Congratulations to our Class of 2021

Since our last Newsletter message to you, our Class of 2021 has graduated from the College and embarked on the next stage of their journey. We are enormously proud of their vast and varied achievements. Many of our girls have achieved top subject marks and ATARs, along with entry into the courses and universities of their dreams. For others, it’s the personal growth and the hard but satisfying work it took to achieve that growth, which makes them stand ten feet tall with pride at the end of their school years. Each of our graduates has demonstrated great courage and commitment to achieving her goals regardless of what obstacles and detours the world threw her way.

As a cohort, our Class of 2021 achieved:

A significant percentage improvement in Band 6 results in: Software Design and Development (43%), Studies of Religion (43%), Hospitality (30%), Textiles and Design (26%), Ancient History (20%), Visual Art (13%) and Economics (11%).
An increase in ATARs >90 (47%, up from 44% in 2020).
Improved exam results (82% of students performed better in external exams than in internal assessments, up from 74% in 2020)
Improved ranking in the SMH Top 100 Schools list (Pymble is now ranked 25, up from 31 last year).

Special congratulations to our Dux of School, Tess Rickard (pictured below), whose passion for learning led her to achieve a perfect ATAR of 99.95 – one of only 14 girls in NSW to do so. Tess is now on her way to her goal of addressing “one of the biggest issues facing the world, climate change,” having commenced a degree in Renewable Energy Engineering.

Click here to read our in-depth HSC Results publication.

These achievements did not occur by chance or accident. The girls and their teachers worked incredibly hard – on campus and online – supported by the strategic implementation of our HSC Improvement Project, which saw the College instigate and complete a number of key actions in 2021. Our HSC Improvement Project was one of 11 key focus areas in 2021 under our Academic Intelligence pillar, which is one of the four pillars of our new Strategic Direction, Watch Us Change the World (WUCTW).

In addition, Pymble was one of the standout schools on the North Shore in terms of 2021 NAPLAN results, ranking third (Primary School) and fifth (Secondary School), according to the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority.

I look forward to sharing more insights about priority areas and achievements of WUCTW, as well as new initiatives we are implementing in 2022, in subsequent issues of this Newsletter.

For now, stay safe and well.