As we hit Term 3, Week 6, our Year 11 have commenced their final exams and in two weeks, our Year 12 will head into their Mock Exams. It is an exciting time in our calendar, where students get to challenge themselves and demonstrate an incredible complexity of thinking. Our teachers eagerly await completed papers, where they too find a great sense of achievement in seeing their students succeed after months of teaching, consistent practice and determination. As educators we take great pride in the resilience of our students and their resolve to challenge themselves in what some may suggest is an outdated measure of student success in today’s educational setting.
But herein lies the truth, grades matter and so do the habits that produce them. Trust me, the best schools build both, on purpose.
There is certainly a wealth of reading material regarding the value of academic exams and education. While some challenge this traditional paradigm in schools, there can be no doubt that academic success is absolutely central to education. Of course, education is not only about academic success. It's also important that students graduate with a secure sense of themselves, a strength of character and a strong moral compass, but still, the right kind of academic success is unequivocally necessary.
Conversations that pit one type of learning against the other are both unnecessary and unhelpful. It seems obvious to me that we cannot neglect the non-exam, intangible qualities of curiosity, love of truth, independence, determination, development of character and conscience, and so on – the skills and qualities we know from our own experience, and so many other sources, that really count after the school years. It is obvious that an education that equips students with decent grades yet without these skills is not an adequate one.
Education is all about the long game and you cannot challenge the importance of a values driven education. However, there is a lot to be said for knowing a great deal of ‘stuff’, and for excelling in exams. They are both needed! When we consider the idea, ‘knowing a lot of stuff,’ there is a lot of nonsense spoken about the changing need to know. This has been brought on by IT - ‘you can Google it’ or 'with AI now there is no longer a premium on knowledge' being reasons for focusing more on skills than traditional disciplinary knowledge. But there are massive differences between things on your phone or laptop and things in your brain. You can actually use the latter much better than the former – that is, knowing and understanding content is actually central to developing the very skills and qualities that the OECD and other national and international bodies say are needed for the modern economy. Let’s be honest we want our professionals, in any area, to know their ‘stuff’ and have the critical skills to use that knowledge in an ethical way.
This brings me back to exams. I have heard it said that exams are ‘old school’ and meaningless in the modern world; that they only give a picture of what someone can do in a compressed timeframe, and so should be replaced by other modes of assessment. There is some truth to this, so complementing exams with other types of assessment is required. But as with any extreme statement, there's always an element of well it depends... If exams were simply sprung on students by surprise, and simply consisted of factual recall, then it would indeed be lamentable. But instead consider exams that are scheduled well in advance, with probing original questions that test understanding and insight, where lessons leading to those exams support increasingly independent student preparation by practicing over an extended period.
Success in exams like this will come for students who genuinely understand, and who have the organization, determination and discipline to prepare well over months. The “it’s all about exams” or “it’s all about skills and qualities” debate is a false choice. Academic success today means knowing a great deal and cultivating the dispositions that make knowledge usable. The capacity to take exams is a central tenet to the development of academic success!
At Somerset we are values driven and believe in a holistic education that includes academics as a critical element. Academics and values do not evolve as separate entities being taught in isolation. So, when it comes to periods of examinations, there is no tension here. We recognise there is a huge convergence, because scholarship is not something dull that only happens in dusty libraries, in silence. It’s what happens when active minds are sufficiently at peace with themselves that they can engage with the world, with ideas, and with other people – when the excitement of making a connection gives a new perspective, and most likely, raises a whole series of questions, thoughts and possibilities. Genuine scholarship leads to wonder, and even awe; and well-constructed exams, used with judgement and alongside other evidence, can validly signal parts of that formation. When we get scholarship right—calm minds, sharp questions, honest effort—exam success follows as a consequence, not the point. That is the education our students deserve, and the one society needs.
Good luck Year 11 and 12 on your current and upcoming exams! A busy time ahead, but equally so an exciting time for which you have been well prepared.
The adolescent years are characterised by profound growth - not only academically, but neurologically and emotionally. During this stage, students are developing the capacity for independence, long-term planning and self-regulation, while simultaneously navigating increased academic and personal demands.
It is within this context that the MYP Personal Project, undertaken in the final year of the programme, becomes a defining experience. More than a final assessment, it is a carefully designed opportunity for students to develop the habits, skills and mindset required to manage complexity, persevere through challenge and see a significant piece of work through to completion.
The Personal Project invites students to undertake an extended, self-directed inquiry into an area of personal interest, culminating in both a product and a reflective report (International Baccalaureate Organization [IBO], 2026).
Character is shaped at school – whether we like it or not.
The Jubilee Centre at University of Birmingham was founded in 2012 and has become one of the leading institutions in character research and education. Research continues to endorse that character education increases student performance and final outcomes in schools, yet it is so often undermined.
The Jubilee Centre’s research is extensive, involving more than 30 000 students and 200 teachers. The pillars of character development include Intellectual Virtues, Moral Virtues, Civic Virtues and Performance Virtues. These pillars ultimately enable young people the opportunity to develop ‘good sense’, or practical wisdom; the capacity to choose the right course of action in difficult situations. So much of what is learnt at schools comes not only from direct academic instruction, but from what students’ experience, observe, and signals that are sent in daily interactions. What is modelled to, and by students, has always been as important as what is taught but arguably the complex world our young people will need to navigate has put character education once again front of mind.
With this in mind, it is no surprise the Jubilee Centre’s research suggests that character is Caught, Taught and Sought. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Education and Skills Policy Programme created a framework that that offers a broad vision of what students will need to thrive in 2030 and beyond. It comes as no surprise that values, attitudes and the ability to find direction in meaningful and responsible ways.
We have been reflecting on how character education is taught at Somerset explicitly as part of our academic curriculum, within experiential learning activities, outdoor education program and service-learning initiatives. We are committed to ensuring that developing young people of character sits at the core of what we do and is acknowledged accordingly. Ensuring virtues literacy is something that accompanies our students into the world beyond Year 12 is important and will put them in good stead to successfully lead teams, businesses, families and friendships.
In the first week of Term 3, Year 11 worked with the team from Peer Power in our inaugural focus on character session. Students were challenged to consider what student agency looked like, what goals they aspire to achieve in 2027 may look like and how the College can support them in reaching them. Our Head of Year 11, Mrs Bronwyn Wright, led the cohort as they created goals that were measurable, and shared amongst the cohort. IT as interesting to note, these goals held a strong correlation to our Graduate Profile – aspirations for the character we believe students who graduate from Somerset College develop through all they learn, observe, participate in and contribute to.
Students suggested:
I think something that was incredibly helpful was teaching us about Confident, Secure and Pensive in order to help us join together and bond the school as one. I think amidst generating goals for houses and our cohort it jogged my thinking on personal goals that I can use to extend myself as a socially confident student.
I thought the goals shared amongst the whole grade was helpful in determining what the cohort is aiming to achieve in Year 12. I learnt that I think more logically about my decisions through the personality quiz. I think this knowledge will impact my behaviour by giving me an outlook of what the grade will do in Year 12 and how myself as a person can contribute.
I enjoyed talking to all different people, this was certainly helpful. this impacts my behaviour because my goal is to be more approachable. This is a great step into right direction. I really enjoyed today and learned a lot.
Our Year 11’s are partnering with a Character and Conscience programme, which continues to have a positive impact on students. Creating space for students to engage using a common language around the importance of who we are, and the importance of character cannot be under-estimated. It is ultimately an illustration that character is formed within the classroom but equally, beyond it.
Artificial intelligence can produce a scientific explanation in seconds. It can summarise research, analyse information and present an answer that sounds confident and convincing. The challenge is that a convincing answer is not always a correct one.
A recent Australian report by Learning First, drawing on responses from nearly 3,400 teachers and more than 750 school leaders, highlights the impact AI is already having on student learning and assessment. The report warns of cognitive outsourcing, where students hand the thinking itself over to AI and bypass the productive effort required for genuine learning. It also draws attention to the “mirage of false mastery”, where a polished piece of work may create the appearance of understanding without providing trustworthy evidence of what the student knows and can do.
This is where Science education is becoming more important than ever. Learning scientific knowledge remains essential, but what happens in a Science classroom is about much more than remembering the parts of a plant. It teaches students how to ask worthwhile questions, analyse data, recognise patterns and evaluate the quality of evidence. Students learn to consider alternative explanations and decide whether a conclusion is genuinely supported by the information available.
These skills have always mattered and extend well beyond the science classroom. In a world where students can access an immediate and convincing answer to almost any question, they need the knowledge and confidence to pause, question it and decide whether it can be trusted.
Headmaster Chris Ivey recently spoke about the importance of helping students embrace AI in their learning without allowing it to do the work for them. Within Science at Somerset, we are considering what this looks like in practice.
We do not want to ignore AI or simply tell students not to use it. It is already part of the world in which they are being educated, and it will almost certainly be part of their future workplaces. Our students need to learn how to use AI effectively and responsibly. At the same time, they need enough scientific knowledge to recognise when an AI response is inaccurate, incomplete or unsupported.
We also need to protect the opportunities students have to develop their own critical thinking. When a polished answer is always available at their fingertips, it can be tempting to skip the difficult thinking that leads to genuine understanding.
This year, our Year 10 science students have been completing Critical AI Prompt Engineering lessons. These lessons have two connected aims. The first is to show students how the quality and specificity of a prompt affects the responses produced by AI. Students compare different prompts and evaluate how factors, such as scientific detail, intended audience and required format, influence the accuracy and effectiveness of the explanation they receive. They then use what they have learned to construct a purposeful scientific prompt of their own.
The second, and more important aim, is to teach students that generating a response is not the end of the process. Once AI has produced an explanation, students critically analyse it. They look for scientific misconceptions, missing information, unsupported claims and language that sounds impressive but does not actually explain the science. Through this process, students learn that a well-written response is not necessarily an accurate one.
Prompting is only one part of the process. Asking AI a better question may improve its response, but it does not remove the student’s responsibility to check the answer. We want students to ask: Is this scientifically accurate? What evidence supports it? Has anything important been left out? Could this explanation create a misconception? Most importantly, do I understand the science well enough to make that judgement?
The same Year 10 cohort is also completing its Research Investigation through a safe exam browser. This controlled environment restricts access to generative AI while students complete the task in class. It gives them the opportunity to analyse evidence, develop an argument and communicate their own scientific reasoning without an AI tool generating the response for them.
Protecting assessment integrity should not mean abandoning rich tasks such as research investigations. Our challenge is to preserve these valuable learning experiences while also gathering trustworthy evidence of what each student knows and can do.
These approaches are intended to work together. At some points, students are taught how to use AI carefully, purposefully and critically. At others, they work without it and demonstrate what they can do independently. Students need experience with both. They need to understand when AI can support their learning, but they also need the confidence and ability to think without it.
Year 10 was deliberately selected for this approach because the assessment is completed and graded internally, with common conditions across the Somerset cohort. This allows us to strengthen students’ research, analysis and scientific writing before they enter the senior years, without affecting externally comparable results or their future pathways.
Although Year 10 was chosen for the controlled assessment approach, our response to AI is not limited to restricting its use. Recent research from Learning First argues that discussions about AI in education must consider who is using it, for what purpose and in which educational context. This has guided the different approaches we have taken across year levels.
On the Student Free Day, all Somerset staff attended an AI conference where Professor Kai Riemer discussed the potential value of using AI as a feedback tool when it is guided by a carefully constructed prompt. Following this, Year 12 Physics students were provided with a pre-constructed prompt to help them self-assess their completed Research Investigation draft before final submission.
The prompt was deliberately designed to keep the student responsible for the thinking. It could not write or rewrite any part of the report. Instead, it asked students to reconsider their reasoning, identify areas requiring further attention and check whether they had addressed the assessment criteria. Students then had to decide for themselves whether a change was needed and how that change should be made.
This approach also responds to the concern raised by Learning First about “cognitive outsourcing”, where students hand the thinking itself over to AI. The prompt was most useful for students who had already completed a thoughtful draft. It could help them identify gaps and question their decisions, but it could not replace the research, scientific understanding or effort required to produce the report.
We cannot know which technologies will have the greatest impact, or what careers will exist, when our younger students leave school. What we can do is make careful decisions about when AI may support learning and when students need to work without it. New technologies will continue to produce exciting claims about what might soon be possible. Our aim is for students to leave Somerset science able to approach those claims with interest, while still asking for the evidence.
At our Founders’ Day service last week, I shared with those present that I love politics! Irrespective of the party, I enjoy learning about how and why people in positions of leadership do what they do. So, when I had the chance to watch the musical, “Hamilton”, I was intrigued by the concept of what these people tried to do in starting a new nation 250 years ago.
There’s a theme running through the musical and it comes from the protagonist, Alexander Hamiltion. He is often asking or being accused of being obsessed with his legacy. I read a wonderful quote just recently which puts legacy into action. A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.”
Part of the problem is that when we think of Legacies we sometimes think of impact through career or money. However, I believe our legacy is more about what we’ve done to impact others. It’s about the lives we have or will touch along the way. As we celebrated Founders’ Day, we can look to those who were there in 1983 and then look to those who continued to have influence on this incredible place, and understand their legacy. Each of them has had an impact on who we are today.
At Founders’ Day we honour people who gave of themselves for something greater than themselves.
Ordinary people who in the early 1980s, decided to do something extraordinary, they were going to create something that possibly none of them would have imagined would be the size, scope or quality of what it is today? And to those who followed our founders, they continued to contribute to this place in ways that we often don’t realise.
So, my challenge to the Somerset community is pretty simple, particularly to our staff and senior students.
What sort of legacy do we want to leave during our lives? It’s worth asking ourselves as we celebrated the legacy of our former Chair, My Tony Hickey OAM. Our legacy won’t be in status, but in the way we treat people. It won’t be in our networks, but in how we seek to make a difference to all, not just those around us. It won’t be our wealth, but what we do with that wealth to support others.
Sometimes, it’s hard to figure out how we do this. As a Christian, I think God gives each of us a desire to serve. In a book of the Bible called Galatians, there are some helpful hints on how we might build our legacy and I’ve summarised them here.
Don’t put yourself first. A legacy that matters, as we celebrate today, can only happen when we put others first.
Stay true to who you are. We are all very different, with different gifts and talents, so use what you’ve got to build into those around you and don’t think you have to be like the other person. This place is built on different people, at different times, with different gifts and each has played an incredible part.
Share what you have. Your time, your gifts, your wisdom.
And don’t get tired of doing it…a legacy needs commitment.
As I think of legacy, I think of the earlier quote, A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit.” Our Founders and those who followed wanted to do something that would benefit others. But as they have done, we don’t just need to talk about it, we need to be intentional.
So, as we give thanks for our Founders and those who have served this community right through from 1983 to today, we give thanks for those who continue to serve, who continue to enrich this place. It’s my role as the current Headmaster to remind us all of what has gone before and to ask us all to consider what we will do for our own legacy. Let’s challenge ourselves on what we want our legacy to be acknowledging we’re never too young or too old to reflect on this.
The English Department continues to set high expectations, reinforced by exceptional achievements and dedication in both our staff and students. This year, we are proud to highlight several key successes that underscore the department’s commitment to excellence and intellectual endeavour through the year.
Once again, our students have demonstrated outstanding performance in NAPLAN assessments, achieving consistently high results across year levels. These achievements reflect the hard work and dedication of both students and teachers in mastering the English curriculum through the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program.
Furthermore, our Year 12 students have excelled in their Queensland Certificate of Education (QCE) results, achieving our best academic outcomes to date. The high scores achieved by our students are a testament to their perseverance and high-quality, consistent instruction provided by our dedicated English teachers.
A special mention goes to two of our Literature students, Ariana Hannaford and Jodie Lin who received special recognition for their results, achieving best in the state in 2025. Another student of Literature and English and Literature Extension, Alya Chirathivat-Geralds, has gone on to take up further study at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Exceptional outcomes indeed. This remarkable achievement highlights our student’s exceptional dedication to and passion for their chosen subject, setting the bar for future cohorts.
Effective communication is also key to building student progress as an essential 21st Century skill. Just sitting back and experiencing something goes a long way in building relatable understanding and appreciation of a literary text, technique or required skill set through the medium of spoken and written English.
To this end, The English Faculty focusses on also taking students beyond the classroom, providing real world experiences across The College calendar.
Year 9 Language and Literature and Year 12 English students experience real staged performances of Shakespeare plays, provided to augment their study of these setworks. Romeo and Juliet for Year 9 Language and Literature and Othello for our Year 12 students are brought to life in the Sue Roberts Theatre in workshopped format by renowned theatre company ‘Shake n Stir,’ best positioning our students in their considerations of the texts.
Also, The English Faculty hosts TEDx Somerset Youth. Delivered live to the Year 11 English cohort by six brave and eloquent Year 12 English students, this two-hour presentation models persuasive techniques and platforms the skill of public speaking in a real TED environment, presenting current topical continuous issues to our Year 11 English cohort. In doing so, this experience assists in informing students in their own English Persuasive Speaking tasks that they present both in Years 11 and 12 as Summative Spoken Assessment for IA2. This year, Tedx Somerset Youth 2026 has been published to the TED Talks platform, and our student voices are now available as live presentations via YouTube under the official banner of TED- Ideas Worth Spreading. Whilst all students have been recognised online, some received remarkable responses. Specifically, our College Captain, Abhiraj Sarmah’s speech entitled ‘Racism: The Australian Punchline’ has gone viral, garnering more than 10K views- a testament not only to his skilled speaking skills but also to his thought-provoking subject matter. Congratulations to all the speakers who participated and made the event a resounding success.
None of these achievements would be possible without the unwavering dedication and hard work of our English Team. Our teachers’ commitment to fostering a love of literary texts, learning about our place in the world through literature and developing critical expression in our students is truly commendable. A special thank you goes to Jen Rush, our Assistant Head of Department, whose ongoing dedication has been instrumental in our department’s success.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to making our English Department a celebration of success. Together, we continue to inspire and achieve greatness.
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