From the Principal - Edition 16 - 2023

Celebrating with the Class of 2023

The final week of formal lessons for our Year 12s is a week of excitement mingled with a little trepidation. For the students, their formal schooling is almost over. There are only a few weeks of exams and some fantastic milestone events left in their life as a secondary school student. For the staff and the rest of the School, we farewell the Class of 2023 and hope that their time at Westminster has prepared them for the first steps in their life beyond school.

While our students move to the next stage of their life journey, the School stays where it is and our care for our students continues. Seeing students we have worked with succeed in life beyond school is a tremendous source of satisfaction and revitalisation for all staff at Westminster.

Connection to a community like ours is becoming more and more important in our hyperconnected world. The humanity and care fostered in our community provides a building block for the emotional and social intelligence needed in a complex and everchanging world. Just last Friday, the student-led TANZEED walk brought our community together for a great cause, helping improve a school for less privileged students in Tanzania.

As always, we welcome our community to celebrate Prize Giving with us. We ask that parents invited to Prize Giving do attend so that they are there to celebrate in the moment when their child receives an award. To our students in Senior School, celebrating in the success of fellow students is much more important than looking for ways not to attend. I would challenge all students to show the humility and appreciate that celebrating the success of others is an important exercise in humanity.

Thank you to the Class of 2023 for all that you have done. You have worked as a cohort with great leadership from our captains and leaders. You have helped us all grow and achieve more than we thought possible.

We are all looking forward to sharing in Prize Giving and Valedictory on Thursday 23 November 2023 with the Class of 2023, who will then become the 59^th graduating class in Westminster’s history.

Simon Shepherd
Principal