General News
10 March, 2022
Mortlake school leaders announced
MORTLAKE College and St Colman’s Primary School have welcomed their 2022 student leaders.
MORTLAKE College and St Colman’s Primary School have welcomed their 2022 student leaders.
St Colman’s Primary School selected Arlo Herry, Indi Wardlaw and Layla Wardlaw to act as leaders of its student cohort.
St Colman’s Primary School principal Stacey Atkins said the students were “doing a fantastic job”.
“We look to them to lead by example, and show the younger kids the way we do things here at St Colman’s,” she said.
“The nice thing about our school is they build up to it, where all our senior students are seen as our school’s leaders.
“It’s just taking that next step up, and they’ve done great.
“As someone who is new to the school they’re showing me things, such as remembering to put the flags out or showing what we do at assembly, all those types of things.”
Ms Atkins said the student leaders were tasked with both leading by example and undertaking a wide variety of hands-on leadership responsibilities.
“Our mission statement is “We welcome, we learn, we have faith, we care” and they are asked to embody that ethos and show the younger kids that’s what we do here,” she said.
“Then you get in to all the fun things such as Meals on Wheels, leading sports days or our Athletics Carnival this Friday and raising the flags at assembly.”
Mortlake College has also welcomed its student leaders after being selected by their peers.
Mortlake College school captains are Zoee Boyden and Amelia Horan, with Katy Jarvie serving as school council representative captain.
House captains are Nicky Power (Succeed), Steevie Collins (Inspire) and Tasha Killen (Endeavour).
Mortlake College principal Sean Fitzpatrick said the student leaders were “settling in nicely”.
“They’re doing a great job in terms of their initiative and desire to turn up and want to take on one of these roles,” he said.
“I think student leadership is an evolving place for us and our school, and we would like to give them the opportunity to have more voice and agency to make decisions about our school and where the student population sits.
“That’s the something that we have through Tain Shelten, who is our student leadership co-ordinator to the students.
“We want to get in touch with them about their needs and how we can help them develop their own capabilities to enable the things they want to see happening in their school.”
The students were selected through a democratic process in which they delivered a speech to their peers on their perception of leadership before going to a student vote.
“Ultimately they are representing our student body,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.
“Our captains will oversee the entire student body, and our student council representative is also a very important role.
“Our senior house captains drive anything house related, and we also have middle and lower years representatives of those houses.”
