CHAIR’S REPORT AT THE 2024 AGM 

Ladies and gentlemen,  

It is my pleasure to present my first report as the Chair of the PWS Council. I am grateful to the preceding Chair, Kewan Bond for building and running a strong and diverse Council over several years of leadership. The Council role is to provide strategic direction and governance to the school. It ensures that the school continues to deliver high quality Steiner education by monitoring its performance, educational outcomes, ensuring compliance, and managing risks and finances. I would like to thank each and every one of the outgoing Council members for their hard work and dedication throughout the year. In particular, I would like to thank Wim Matthys, our outgoing Secretary, who is not renominating for Council tonight but remains a parent at the school. Thank you, Wim, for your work on and dedication to the council during this past year, including that on the Risk Subcommittee.  

Tonight, I will give you a brief overview of the main highlights of the past year from a council viewpoint.  

The overall picture of the school is one of strength, growth and overcoming the many challenges that have arisen and those that are currently being well managed.  

Our school is one of the largest Steiner schools in Australia. Over 180 staff provide holistic Steiner education via a high quality Curriculum to 595 students from K4 through to Year 12 across two campuses. The staff are well supported by their Faculty Heads, Coordinators and the College. The development of new staff includes Teacher Training in Anthroposophy and mentoring. Our NAPLAN results are consistently at or above the national average. We now have three streams of Steiner High School students across classes 7-9, and in another three years we will have three streams all the way to Class 12. Last year, 40 Year 12 students graduated and are now pursuing careers of their choice.  

Here I would like to acknowledge and thank the Administrator, our Coordinators, teaching, assistants, admin, finance, grounds and all other staff for their hard work and dedication that is resulting in a positive school experience for so many of our students. Our staff and parent surveys were very positive in most areas, reflecting the healthy culture and energy among the staff and students at our thriving school.  

The vision of offering High School Steiner education in WA has grown from one to two and now three streams. One of the main drivers of this vision was our Administrator, Bruce Lee who, together with a small, dedicated team of people, worked hard to make it a reality.  

Our Administrator, Bruce Lee is on the Board of Steiner Education Australia as well as becoming more active with the Association of Independent Schools WA as a long-time Head of School. He actively fosters a healthy cooperation between the WA Steiner schools, as well as providing support to those schools experiencing challenges. His active strategic leadership in these areas, which is well beyond his written job description, has been key to the continued growth of Steiner education in Western Australia. Thank you, Bruce, for your positive leadership, strategic vision and determination that contributes so much to the growth of Steiner education in this state.  

The enrolments at our school have grown across most classes, with marketing now targeting classes where students traditionally decide to pursue different education choices, such as Class 5 (for Class 7 choices) and Class 10 (for Class 11 and 12 choices or other education pathways). This will ensure that classes are as full as possible in order to continue the healthy financial situation of the school, as our enrolments determine our income from the Federal and State governments and the tuition fees from parents and carers.   

This segues to our finances. The key points include the final payments for Stage 1 of Parkerville Steiner College, that has resulted in six classrooms built at Parkerville. Another key financial milestone was the recent council approval of the Business Plan for Stage 2 of Parkerville Steiner College. Stage 2 comprises three Science/Chemistry/General Learning Classrooms of 85-95m², one 49m² General Learning Classroom, a pantry/storage and a teacher’s office. In total 370m² for buildings and 90m² for verandas.  

The school finances are healthy and able to service these large capital works. Here I wish to acknowledge the valuable work of Sunu Rozario, Dennis Garac and our Finance team that makes this vision and the financial wellbeing of our school a reality.  

I will end with this excerpt from our school mission statement:  

“We, parents, teachers, and staff recognise and value children as spiritual beings who come into the world with specific intentions. Through Anthroposophy our work is to strengthen and support them to fulfil their life task. Thus, we strive to develop in our students the capacities for creative and independent thinking and judgement, enabling them to act in a free, morally responsible way… The education strives to educate the whole child with a healthy balance in intellectual, practical, and social-emotional experiences.” 

Thank you. 

Peter Finlay 
Council Chair