To our Year Seven students, I want to start by sending my heartfelt congratulations to you all. You’ve taken those first crucial steps into secondary school, and let me just say—what an incredible start you’ve made. We all know that joining a new school is not an easy thing to do. You've faced the excitement and the nerves, perhaps some anxiety, but I’m certain that the welcome you’ve received since you started and the loud applause as you entered this assembly will reassure you that ICHK is a special place that we are all extremely proud of.

The reason ICHK is a special place, in my view, is because of the strength of our community, it’s about all of us, together, and I want to take a moment to reflect on what the word ‘community’ really means for us here because it underpins everything that we do.

A strong community is diverse and vibrant, woven from threads of different cultures, beliefs, backgrounds and perspectives. It’s a place where we cultivate, we celebrate, we accept, respect, and understand.

A good community has empowered people who have the best interests of everyone at heart, people who push for improvement of themselves, of others, and of their environment.

A thriving community is one where all members take responsibility and hold each other accountable. We expect that in our community everyone will respect our shared norms and values.

A joyful community is a nurturing environment where each of us feels valued, where leadership potential is celebrated, and where we uplift one another as we travel along our personal journeys.

And finally, a harmonious community is at peace with itself, confident in its identity and its purpose.

Now that we have an idea of ICHK’s definition of community, it can serve as a reference point for our decisions and actions as we move forward together. These actions must see you, the students, thriving as best you can at school, with as many opportunities as possible to explore your interests and potential, so that you can thrive.

Your teachers, LSAs and our support staff will work as hard as they can to provide these experiences for you, but experiences and opportunities are incomplete without the values that must be lived daily by all of us here at ICHK. These are the values we truly celebrate, and a physical representation of these is displayed by some of our students here today. If you are wearing, have chosen to accept or have been awarded an ICHK pin of any colour, please stand.

These people are wearing an ICHK pin because they are choosing to live ICHK’s values, and they are choosing to make this commitment visible - that’s important.

They are choosing to adopt a growth mindset, to be open-minded, committed to learning and resilient in the face of challenges.

They have the courage to stand up for our community’s values and to persevere when things get tough.

And they support the people around them - they recognise their needs, guide them along and celebrate their success.

Thank you everyone, well done, take a seat.

Every one of us here has the opportunity to live and demonstrate these values, and living them forms an essential part of the norms that our community adheres to - they are at the core of effective learning at our school. At ICHK, we strive to connect our actions with our values, and the question we must continually ask ourselves is: am I truly living up to these values? Am I contributing to my community and creating an environment where everyone here feels they belong and can thrive?

To our Year 7s, as we discussed last week you’re going to spend over 9,000 hours at Secondary school, and we owe it to you to make sure that that many hours means a lot more than an academic transcript. Our school isn’t only a place to study, you are all going to grow up and become young adults here. It must be a place where we join together—teachers, LSAs, support staff and students - all of us - to learn together and thoughtfully build something special, something unique, something different, something better.

For you all, it means to be a happy, confident, intelligent warrior. It means being at peace with yourself and secure in your place within our school and community. It means understanding that intelligence is not just about passing exams - it can take many forms, and it starts with making thoughtful decisions based on what’s happening around you.

And being a warrior? Well, that’s about showing bravery. It’s about gathering together those around you, standing strong, and representing the very best of our community.

I call on all of you to recognise our values as a school, to strive to live them yourself, and expect them from the people around you. We want your experience here at ICHK to be about so much more than textbooks and tests. We want it to be about embodying the values of our community, and from this, amazing opportunities will come.

So, work hard, be nice to each other, and best of luck for the year ahead.