Sydney Boys High School

Principal's Message

Principal Dr Kim Jaggar OAM

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the website of the Sydney Boys High School family. Established in 1883, our school is proud of its eminent alumni and great traditions.

Our School Mission

Sydney Boys High School offers opportunities for all boys to achieve excellence in academic, cultural, artistic, sporting, social justice and community endeavours. We build an inclusive, caring environment which fosters collaborative learning and positive relationships. We want to provide the best value for money all round boys’ education in Sydney.

Our School Vision

We strive to be at the forefront of educational practice, pursuing excellence while contributing to the world as scholars, sportsmen, educators and leaders.

Our Strategic Improvement Plan: 2022-2026

1. Growth and attainment

Each student will be engaged through high expectations, differentiation and a focus on developing skills in problem solving, evaluation, working with others, creativity and innovation and communication.

2. Nurturing Personal Wellbeing

We will strive for every member of the school community to develop the skills needed for a healthy and balanced life, maintaining positive relationships and having the resilience and determination to deal with any challenges they may face.

3. Closer reading, clearer writing

We will empower students to create and evaluate both creative and analytical language in a way that deepens their understanding of the world they live in and develops their engagement with it.

Our Educational Philosophy

We strive for excellence in everything we do. We provide a learning environment that allows every student to thrive as an individual. Excellent performance is not an exception but an expectation at High. We see value in the positive psychology framework (PERMA). We work hard to increase positive emotions throughout our school. We try to build greater engagement with the school by the wider school community – school staff, students, parents, Old Boys, friends. We support and encourage boys in their quest to develop respectful and fulfilling relationships with their peers, school staff and members of the community. We guide boys in their search for meaning in the disciplines we introduce them to, in the world around them, in the activities they engage in and in their interactions with others. We have a priority on recognising and rewarding accomplishment at all levels. We teach boys, not subjects. We want to inspire learning for its own sake by sharing our joy of learning and modelling a lifelong dedication to learning.

The school is organised to pursue individual enlargement by operationalising the IPEC Model: IQ, PQ, EQ and CQ. Intelligences share common features: they are abilities; they manifest specific correlational patterns among themselves and in relation to other intelligences; and they develop with age. The IPEC model takes a holistic approach to growth, incorporating these four intelligences. It seeks to describe the discrete and interconnected aspects of these intelligences and relates them to our whole school plan to enlarge our boys by providing opportunity – in its widest possible sense.

As a successful learning community, we need to surrender ourselves to the skills, judgements and actions of each other, in order to fashion a truly collaborative environment, replete with deconstructed classrooms and boys happily engaged in learning by doing. Our boys will be enlarged in their intellectual capacity (IQ), their physical skills and empathy with their bodies (PQ), their self-awareness, self-regulation, social skills, empathy and motivation (EQ) and in their awareness and knowledge of Australian society with its culturally diverse settings and those of the world around us.

We are trying to embed in our boys, important future-focussed earning skills: problem solving, evaluating, working in teams, communicating and creating and innovating. In order to maximise our gross collective wellbeing, we rely on a balance of pursuing academic mastery, collaborating with others to achieve worthwhile goals and gently urging boys out of their comfort zone to attempt new challenges. We aim to create ‘future fit’ minds that are: creative, disciplined, synthesising, respectful and ethical. We encourage boys to have goal lines, but we set them side lines. We do exhort our boys to drive themselves towards personal best performance but remind them always that achievement must be framed by procedural limits and ethical boundaries. Knowledge economy people need cutting edge competencies, imagination, fast reactions and a strong competitive streak. We focus on building these capacities and attributes in our students. Spirit can’t be bought but can be built.

Our Junior School (Years 7-9) is focussed on a discourse of personal development. Our theoretical framework interprets Gagné’s differentiated model of talent development. The gifts of the boys in six domains - intellectual, creative, social, perceptual, muscular and motor control - are identified and developed by the influence of the wider school community and are mediated by intrapersonal and environmental catalysts affecting individual rates of progress. Skills are practised systematically in structured programs. The development process is heavily affected by the level of psychological investment of time and energy by individuals, as determined by their goal awareness, motivation and volition.

In the Senior School (Years 10-12) the discourse is around academic achievement. Gagné’s model is retained but Ziegler’s notion of an ‘actiotope’, or action system encompassing the environment and the individual, is added. As students grow more autonomous their pursuit of excellence involves the self-organisation, self-regulation and ongoing adaptation of a complex system comprising the learners and their chosen courses, their teachers, their peers and the environment. The process of development becomes more interactive. The accountability shifts more towards the learner. Intensity and continuity of effort are important in talent development for students to maximise their potential at school. After six years, competencies are developed in socially useful fields: academic, technical, science and technology, the arts, social service, administration, business operations, sports or game technology. The boys are empowered by the process of schooling at High to become engaged, responsible, productive adults. They become adult individuals.

Dr KA Jaggar OAM
Principal