It was a pleasure to welcome more than 600 parents and guardians to our Welcome Drinks last Friday. Thank you for taking your rightful place in our community. St Peter’s College is built on partnership. Your son’s education is not something he is simply handed; it is something he experiences, participates in and grows from each day. Your visible presence strengthens our partnership and helps underpin your son’s development and that of their peers.
A particularly warm welcome to the 185 new students and their families joining us this year. You now form part of a vibrant and inclusive community of 620 Junior School students and 1,030 Senior School students, including 90 boarders and 20 international students. Welcoming new families also invites us to reflect on the diversity that strengthens our School.
In Muster we marked International Mother Language Day. More than 40 languages are spoken in our students’ homes. While English unites us at school, many of our boys move between languages beyond the classroom, carrying with them family stories, traditions and perspectives. This reflects the broader Australian story. Ours is one of the world’s most successful multicultural nations, and in South Australia approximately one quarter of residents were born overseas. We are richer for this diversity, and we are intentional in celebrating it.
Recent Lunar New Year celebrations in the Junior School, along with performances in Assembly and decorations across the campus, recognised the contribution of Chinese culture within our community.
This week we also acknowledged the beginning of Lent with Shrove Tuesday and our Ash Wednesday services. It was moving to witness the solemnity and reverence with which our boys came forward to be anointed with ash. As an Anglican school, we are inclusive and invitational. We welcome families of all faiths and none. The gift of Lent, whether one participates fully in its Christian meaning or reflects more broadly on its themes, is the opportunity to fully embrace truth, respect and service, to be: more disciplined, more compassionate, more aware of others. That aspiration unites us.
We also recognise the commencement of Ramadan for members of our Muslim community. Though observed in different ways, both seasons invite reflection and a renewed commitment to living out these shared values.
Community is sustained not only by attendance but by participation. I am grateful to our Council of Governors, who volunteer their time in stewardship of the School, and to our many parent groups – the Junior and Senior School Friends of Saints, Friends of Music, Mission Guild and numerous sport support groups – who create opportunities for families to connect. Through these groups you experience something alongside your son’s experience. I encourage you to become involved, to build relationships with the families of your son’s friends, and to strengthen the partnership that underpins the formation of strong and lovely young men.
There are many opportunities ahead to gather as a community, including the Junior School Movie and Fun Fair next Saturday 28 February and Senior School Community Day on Friday 24 April, ahead of Anzac Day.
Last week in Muster I challenged our students with a simple question: What are you doing? It is Week 4. Goals should be set, habits forming, and progress made in small, deliberate increments through each lesson, training session and rehearsal. Are you choosing what is hard, or what is easy?
Growth does not come from comfort. If our boys are to graduate as young men, not merely older boys, they must embrace challenge in the classroom, on the sporting field and in the arts, sometimes at the cost of immediate social gratification. A temporary delay in social participation is justified by a permanent improvement in achievement or access to opportunity.
For parents, our partnership is clear. We must resist doing for our sons what they can do themselves. Instead, we provide opportunity to attempt something meaningful, to encounter difficulty, and to develop endurance. Surrounded by such a supportive community, now is the time to lean into challenge and allow growth, even through occasional, well-supported failure.
I look forward to seeing you on the sidelines this weekend.
Tim Browning
Headmaster
