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