Welcome Back

It’s hard to believe that half of the year has already passed! At the end of last term, we had some wonderful opportunities to celebrate our wonderful community through athletics carnivals, ArtsFest, and year 10 work experience.  We also had the opportunity to share semester 1 report cards to provide parents and carers with feedback regarding every student’s progress toward the end of year achievement standard in their subjects. It is important to note that this progress report is best used by staff, students, and parents alike to set goals and determine patterns of behaviour that will support students to strive towards success and excellence by the end of the year in each subject. Being the start of the new semester, now is a great time to talk to teachers and your child about learning, progress and what students can focus on to improve their success.

Installation of Bishop

Yesterday I was blessed to attend the Installation of the seventh Bishop of Toowoomba, Most Reverend Kenneth Michael Howell at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Toowoomba.  Our college was well represented by our Captains, Zahra Manteit & Joshua Nimmo, as well as one of our College Prefects, Jacob Utz.  It was quite the experience to witness the volume of ordained bishops, priests and deacons that attended the ceremony and presided over the installation. 

After listening to Bishop Ken Howell yesterday, I am inspired to work for and serve his ministry in the Diocese of Toowoomba.  He spoke of engaging with society, life on the land, supporting our First Nations brothers and sisters, and of the great work that God’s people can do to enhance our communities.  I look forward to seeing this message transpire into action in our College over future years, and throughout our Diocese of Toowoomba Catholic Schools.

Shaping Our Future – Survey coming out on Monday!

Every two years we ask staff, parents and students in our schools to share their views, to ‘check in’ on how each school within our community, and as a group of 31 schools together, we are bringing to life our purpose: to enable full and flourishing lives. We do this by asking each of you to complete a perception survey. The Shaping our future – Toowoomba Catholic Schools perception survey will be sent via Sentral on the Monday 17 July, so keep an eye out for it.

Great Ambassadors for our College

Over the holidays we were well represented in many fields amongst the wider community. Our QISSN Netball team had their best carnival yet, with 6 wins and 1 loss! This finished them in third of their combined division.  As they say, success breeds success, and the continue focus of this team certainly came to the fore when needed at QISSN.  We are all very proud of you girls!

Our rugby league team at confraternity once again stood up and performed beyond expectations, finishing 4^th in our division of 16 teams.  This is a remarkable effort considering some schools we competed against had 10 times the enrolment of age eligible boys to choose their team from – and I’m pretty sure they are eating very different food from us as well! Despite this, the determination and grit shown by our boys was outstanding.

Likewise, we had 4 girls representing St Joseph’s College in Toowoomba, who took out their division at confraternity with a nailbiting victory over Shalom College. Our girls performed extremely well and were an asset to the SJC team.

During the holidays, we also had 5 girls named in the Volleyball Queensland Squad.  Tiffany Ham, Monique Smith, Charlotte Bennie, Lucy Cusack and Jacinda Smith – Well done!!

And last but not least, Judd Alderton travelled to South Australia to attend the national boxing titles and walked away as the Australian Champion in the Junior 63kg division.  An outstanding effort!!

Mr Peter Cuskelly
Principal