As I moved around the College last week, I am pretty sure that all of our students had a better start to the school year than Charlie Brown’s little sister Sally did!  It was wonderful to see so many new and returning eager faces around the College.  Shalom will be a better place this year for the 270 new Year 7 students, the 30 new students from Year 8-11, the 14 new teachers, the 7 new Teacher Aides and the 11 new ‘Gap Year’ Teacher Aides.  Schools without students are ‘soul-less’ places.  It was great to get our soul back last week.

To all of our Police Families – there would have been no-one not heartbroken at the loss in December of Constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold. Their lives were lost senselessly and needlessly along with that of Mr Alan Dare.  It is a reminder to all of us the risk everyone of our Police officers take on every day.  We have quite a number of QPS families at Shalom. Please know our thoughts and prayers are with you all.  That awful incident was also a reminder to all of us as parents and educators of how important it is to educate our young people to discriminate between real information and conspiracy theories.  It would appear that those responsible for that awful act were drawn to dangerous and deranged lies spread on-line.  We need to model for our young people how to think clearly and to disagree at times but always respectfully. May God hold those grieving families close.

Congratulations to the Class of 2022 – Senior results for last year were very pleasing with almost all of our students achieving the Tertiary entrance that they sought.  We look forward to welcoming back to Shalom on Thursday for Assembly, the College Dux for 2022, Erika Marshman.  Erika worked extraordinarily hard in her Senior years and made the personal sacrifices necessary to achieve an outstanding ATAT of 99.35.

ATAR Results (known results)  

ATAR SCORE	No. of Students	% of cohort in range*
90+	16	12.40
80 – 89.95	28	21.71
70 – 79.95	35	27.13

 

Mr Dan McMahon
Principal
mcmahond@shalomcollege.com