1981 School Magazine

scholarship to play basketball for the Hirayama Gakuen. Jenniler Crockart who won the Queensland Japanese Speak- ing Competition and came second in the National Finals in Melbourne, will continue with her studies of Japanese prior to entering university in 1982. Jenniler ultimately hopes to join the Diplomatic Service. We wish both girls all the best lor the year ahead. Mrs. Moses, mother ol Gillian, offered to form a Japanese Cultural group of parents, stafi and girls. This group will be responsible lor the luture visits by the Hirayama School and has already met and discussed organisation of Japanese lessons lor interested persons next year. As well as organising cultural activities, it will also do much to improve our un- derstanding of our visitors and their culture and to promote even lurther the goodwill existing between our two schools.

Many other people have helped the schoolthroughouttheyear in various ways. Today I would like particularly to mention Mr. Max Howell, Headmaster of Brisbane Grammar School, who has allowed our girls to study music at Brisbane Grammar School during the year, and to use school lacilities such as the Centenary Hall and the oval. Mr. Bill Hayward, the Headmaster of Church ol England Grammar School, has also allowed us to use the rowing facilities as well as the school oval for our athletics. Brother Barry Buckley, Head- master of St. Joseph's, Gregory Terrace, has also provided us with added sporting facilities by allowing the girls on numbers ol occasions to use Terrace's oval.

A signilicant area of development for the year ahead will be in computer awareness and literacy' Mr. Bourke is designing a courie for all year 9 girls and will oversee the installation of our own computer facilities in the near future. These facilities will eventually be used in teaching at all levels' but initially in Mathematics'and accounting in years 11 and 12. They will also have added benefits for staff in the general administra- tion of moderation and reporting procedures. Thus they will give stalf and girls access to modern technology. In September I attended, with senior members of staff, a meeting of the board of secondary school studies to discuss the implementation of the review of school based assessment into Queensland schools. I am pleased to announce that our school will co-operate with the board and be a phase I school for development of these assessment procedures in 1982. By 1983 we will be awarding certificates on the competency bas- ed system of assessment rather then on the norm based procedure currently being used. I would like to stress, howeuer, that ROSBA as it is commonly called, it not a new system os assessment, but a refinement of present techniques which we hope will provide employers and others with more information about the individual achievements of students than is presently possible. On three separate occasions during the past three years, members of the Hirayama School from Japan have visited us and been billeted by families of this school. This year, Mrs. Duncan and Mrs. Torney returned their visits by taking a group of girls to Japan in May. As a result of these cultural exchanges, Mr. Hirayama, the Principal of Hirayama Gakuen, has offered two scholarships to girls for 1981 to study in Japan. Robyn Belcher has been offered a sporting 4

Although this report represents only a brief resume of all the activities occuring in the school, it does allow you to reflect upon the challenge that is offered to us all once we become in- volved with schools. Education is far more than schooling; it is a lifelong process. If girls leaving today consider they are well educated because they came to Brisbane Girls' Gram- mar School, then we have failed them because they are only on the threshold of learning what lile is all about. Sir George Bowen commented in 1863 at the opening of the first Gram- mar school in Queensland at Ipswich that "by education is meant not a mere preparation for some specific trade or profession, but rather preparation for the whole business ol iiie - a preparation which shall fit the student to fill his part well as a member of a flamily, of a professional or of a com- mercial community, and ol society generally and of the state. "