As Head of Senior School I am passionate about Quality Teaching and Learning and its power to change lives, equipping our students to become fulfilled individuals who can successfully participate and provide leadership in society. We seek to develop each student’s abilities through providing a wide and varied curriculum which is being continually expanded and adapted to meet the changing needs of our students. Most recently our extensive review of the Curriculum Years 7 - 10 has led us to seek accreditation for the International Baccalaureate’s Middle Years Programme. This is student-centred and inquiry-based learning. It promotes curiosity, creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, community service and world citizenship. These are the skills most needed by Millennial, or 21st Century learners as they negotiate both their current learning and the world of their future.

As well as promoting a strong forward vision for the Senior School I am passionate about the history and traditions of the School. I have been a teacher at The Illawarra Grammar School since the boys’ school, TIGS, first amalgamated with the girls’ school, SCEGGS Gleniffer Brae - where I had originally been working. The School therefore became co-educational at that point in 1975. I was originally an English teacher and with the amalgamation I took on the role of House Mistress. Since then I have seen the School grow and develop, as the Illawarra region, too, has flourished and redefined itself over the last thirty plus years. In recognition of the significance of the School and its contribution to the Illawarra Business Community I was honoured to receive the Zonta Club of Wollongong’s Business and Professional Woman of the Year Award for 2009 and the Illawarra Women in Business Woman of the Year Highly Commended Award for 2010.

Because of my history with the School I love seeing and hearing about ex-students who sign up as TIGS Alumni via Facebo ok, who achieve various successes or who may make personal contact with the School to let us know where their life has taken them. I particularly enjoy meeting ex-students when they return as parents to enrol their children at their ‘old school.’ They often comment that the School may have changed physically since they attended but that those qualities of care, love, mutual respect and a strong sense of family are all still a feature of “a TIGS education.”
Academic, Christian and Caring have been our Core Values since the School was founded as the Illawarra’s Grammar School in 1959 and they are still our values in the global context of 21st Century learning, living and thriving for students in the Senior School.