Who We Are

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

– 1 Peter 5:7

As much as I am looking forward to Term 2 ending, I am excited about what we will be able to recommence fully in Term 3. I am looking forward to a much fuller sporting and co-curricular program, so students can enjoy the whole educational experience. I am looking forward to being able to welcome parents back onto campus. As we head into Term 3, we will continue to have the same cleaning and sanitising routines in place as we currently have, noting the very real possibility of the circumstances in Melbourne occurring in Sydney.

The following is from our most recent NBCS Annual Report, where Board Chair, Professor Emerita Rosemary Johnston, writes:

Our mission is twofold:

• To provide ‘Excellence in Education’, not just as a glib statement or a meaningless motto but as a personal, everyday lived reality for every student, and for every staff member. We want to exude excellence in whatever we do, in every interaction and relationship; we want to inspire excellence in our students and in each other.
• And in so doing, we want to show and tell, and exude and inspire, ‘Christianity in Action’.

The word ‘excellence’ comes through Old French from the Latin excellentia. There are many definitions as you would all know, but I like that of excellence as ‘virtue’.

Excellence is a virtue: it is something to which we can all aspire. Its key feature is not a comparative with others – to do ‘better than’, to be ‘better than’; it is a deeply personal interior goal, to do ‘the best I can’, to be the ‘best I can’.

We want to promote and inculcate this type of excellence, this virtue of excellence. As a school community, we want to ensure that all our children and young people are encouraged to develop and grow, discover potentials and realise them. We want them to be fully equipped with the attributes, skills and competencies that enable them to do so.

Each child, each staff member, each family, each Board member, is important and unique. We can’t get along without each other. I am reminded of the apostle Paul’s words in the first letter he wrote to the Corinthians (the early Christian community who lived in the powerful Greek city-state of Corinth):

The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. …

Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, ‘I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,’ that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, ‘I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,’ would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything?…

Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. …

This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other.If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honoured, all the parts are glad.

All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it. 

(1 Corinthians 12: 12-27)

This sense of ‘us-ness’ has never been more important than it is now.

“Integrity is not about living perfectly, but about wrestling with something faithfully.” – Rich Villodas

May the term break be a time of refreshment and renewal for students and families alike.

Tim Watson
Principal