School News

Spamalot – Purchase your tickets now!

Footy Tipping Competition – AFL and AFLW

The Tintern Grammar community footy tipping competition is back again for 2021!

We are also pleased to announce our first ever AFLW Tipping Competition.

For those interested in joining the 2021 competitions, details are below:

• AFL Tipping Competition:  https://www.footytips.com.au/comps/Tintern_Grammar_Community  
• Password: tintern

You will then have to log into your own account or create one. When setting up your account, you might like to check the reminder email box so you don’t forget!

The competition is free and open to our entire adult (18+ @ 28/1/2021) Tintern community – Tintern Grammar students will not be permitted to enter. If you have any questions please email communityrelations@tintern.vic.edu.au and we’ll help you get started.

Cash Prizes awarded for the winners of each Tipping Competition:

AFLW Footy Tipping Prizes
The prizes have been adjusted to reflect the shorter AFLW season:

• 1st Prize $100
• 2nd Prize $50
• 3rd Prize $25
• 4th Prize $15

AFL Footy Tipping Prizes:

• 1st Prize $250
• 2nd Prize $120
• 3rd Prize $60
• 4th Prize $40
• 5th Prize $20

If the AFL season is shortened at a later date due to Covid, the tipping competition will continue, but the prizes will be adjusted accordingly. 

Good luck and start tipping!!

Tintern Grammar’s Early Learning Centre

You may not know the Tintern Grammar’s Early Learning Centre has been recognised for its innovative programs and wonderful facilities. The Centre is rated as ‘Exceeding National Quality Standard’ in all seven areas of assessment. Our staff are highly qualified and caring and our children learn through play-based activities and interaction with their classmates in a wonderful semi-rural environment.

Our architecturally designed play space has both substantial indoor and outdoor areas allowing children to develop a sense of wonder through imaginative, free and structured play. Our children are well-supported with a smooth transition to Prep and primary education through our  renowned literacy and numeracy programs and we offer a range of specialist programs including Music, Perceptual Motor Program, Library and Fundamental Motor skills using the specialist facilities of Tintern Grammar.

We have 3 day, 4 day and 5 day options available for both our 3 year old and 4 year old programs.

We have limited vacancies in 3 Year old and 4 Year old programs. Given the difficulty of gaining a place in our ELC in recent years, we would like to offer this rare late opportunity to our alumni.

If you are interested or would like to find out more, please contact our Admissions on 9845 7878 or admissions@tintern.vic.edu.au or come back to me via return email and I can put you in touch.

TPG Movie Under the Stars
Jumanji – Welcome to the Jungle

Don’t miss this fun night out with friends and family! A great opportunity to get to know your year group and community members.

Join us for the TPG Movie Under The Stars on Saturday 27 March on the Tintern Main Oval (with CM Wood Centre the wet-weather location). Gates open at 6:30pm, with the movie to start at 7:45pm (sunset lighting dependent).

Enjoy live music from some of our incredible Tintern students, and browse the Green Team’s sustainability market.

BYO blankets or chairs and picnic hampers. The Green Team will be selling popcorn, lollies, fairy floss and cold drinks. We will also have a Coffee Van and Mobile Ice Creams.

Ticket prices:
Adults $10 Child
Student & concession $5
Family Ticket 1 $26 (2 adults & 2 children)
Family Ticket 2 $21 (1 Adult and 3 Children)

Purchase your tickets through Humanitix here.

Consent and Respectful Relationship Education

The harrowing reports in recent weeks of historic assaults in Sydney and Canberra have been very difficult to read and I am sure that Tintern is not the only school to be looking very carefully at how and when we educate our young women and men around consent and respect in relationships of all types and at all ages.

The developing group of women who have come forward to volunteer their stories of sexual assault or misconduct in the offices of the Australian government in Canberra and the parallel set of allegations developing around Sydney independent schools speak of clearly illegal and appalling conduct. It may be that for you the cases in Sydney speak more loudly, as they do to me as a Principal and as a parent. As presented these involved young men who appeared not to understand, or disregarded, the concept of consent, and women under the age of 18, who were coerced into these situations and did not feel they had the agency or authority to say no when they wanted to. A set of factors that are devastating for any parent to contemplate.

While currently we have had no such events reported at Tintern, it would be naïve to think that it could never happen to students at our school. While I sincerely hope any current or past student who may have experienced any similar experience would seriously consider coming forward to report it, and hopefully do so, the evidence is clear that this often does not happen. I absolutely offer all our students, parents and alumni private and caring support if you have an important conversation to have and I urge you to feel confident to come forward. We must all be willing to face our own reality and history in this fraught area.

At this time, Tintern students, and parents of both boys and girls should (quite rightfully) be asking “What are we doing in this area at our school?”. Tintern has a number of programs and activities that operate from Year 7 onwards. They are a combination of the teaching curriculum, co- and extra-curricular education and our pastoral program, and a mixture of explicit and implicit education. So, I am confident that we have an age and stage appropriate trajectory from Year 7 onwards. It addresses respect in relationships, what consent really means, how to say no when you want to, and what your rights are if you feel they have been infringed upon. For younger students this is in appropriate contexts and the education grows with every child.

This is accompanied in senior years by examinations of the influence of pornography, social media use and other critical elements of modern life, and to do this, we also draw on a variety of external speakers and providers. While I am certain that it is a well-constructed, appropriately directed and gender/age/stage appropriate set of experiences, is it enough? Currently, the evidence across Australian society provides an overwhelming “No, it is not”. If we want to lead the agenda in schools and society, we need to review and improve what we do. We need to see how we can generate better engagement and understanding, support the development of greater empathy and awareness of self and others, and how to activate a broader compassion than all these events indicate is currently embedded in our society – and this starts with schools and families.

Last Tuesday, our secondary students had our House Swimming Carnivals – girls in the morning and boys in the afternoon. In the half day of no swimming, each group participated in several pastoral activities discussing, investigating, and provoking thoughts on decency in adulthood, respect, responsibility, compassion (and on consent). At the start of the day for each gender, I gave a short presentation emphasising the critical importance of the issue of consent for all of us, and that we are absolutely committed to working in a focussed way over the course of 2021, and beyond, on all our students’ understanding of consent, respect, and relationships and how that guides behaviour and action. This is a challenge we simply must take up.

You may find these links as informative and interesting as I did.

• https://theconversation.com/not-as-simple-as-no-means-no-what-young-people-need-to-know-about-consent-155736
• https://schooltv.me/wellbeing_news/special-report-conversation-consent

Brad Fry
Principal