Seek to Understand

Our theme, 'Koodadjinong (koo-dor-djinong) Seek to Understand', reflects the desire of our Perth College community to be curious, with minds open to informed realisations that support our growth as individuals and as a whole.

Our desire to understand builds on last year’s 120-year celebrations, where we focused on Story, story telling and sharing the vision and astonishing achievements of our Founders, the Sisters of the Church.

Koodadjinong, seeking to understand, underlines our educational philosophy - equal weight for wellbeing, innovation and learning and teaching. As we support and encourage our staff to cross pollinate and collaborate, we are giving our students the very best environment in which to cultivate their spiritual, physical and intellectual attributes to Set Them Free from any constraint that might limit them. We want to set our students free, confident in their ability to solve problems, to embrace good physical health as well as a healthy mindset. It puts them in a position of strength to live generously and make a positive contribution to the world around them.

Our students are continuing to benefit from our flagship programs: InsideOut for wellness and resilience; our innovation framework sparc, the long-term healthy activity and athletic Sports Development and Performance Program and our service-learning program. Each offers incredible opportunities for our students to build on their strengths, develop self-governance and awareness, be brave, not perfect, live generously and establish a positive relationship with physical activity. We’ve had such a fabulous start to 2023. We’ve visited Wagin, celebrated the fine artists in our community, put on an unforgettable performance of

Les Misérables and celebrated our 2022 Trailblazers at a special assembly. Our Class of 2022 notched up a substantial collective achievement, with 84 per cent of them tackling ATAR courses (compared with just over a third of the cohort in WA overall) and 87 per cent of our ATAR students achieving entry to a university of their choice. Our 2022 median ATAR was a very respectable 87.20, and we are extremely proud of the fact that we not only refused to restrict our students’ choices, but that we are true to the vision of the founding sisters, encouraging our students to attempt the subjects that match their interests and aspirations.

We had 50 students complete VET Certificate II or higher, our students completed 1583 hours of community service and were awarded 41 Duke of Edinburgh International Awards. We want to congratulate also our joint duxes, Taylor Racey and Isha Sing Goraya, who achieved an ATAR ranking of 99.5.

We’re excited to share updates about the progress of our Junior School redevelopment on our website.

We continue to equip our students to tackle life beyond school, pursuing innovation in every aspect of our schooling, to setting them free to thrive beyond the school gates.

Helen Aguiar PRINCIPAL