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Today we bid farewell to our principal, Ms Anne Millard, one of the most extraordinary educationalists of the current millennium, and one whose meteoric career has evoked comment throughout the service. Anne brought to this school a wealth of experience in many educational fields, including almost two years of classroom teaching of junior school art. She had previously been deputy principal at Salisbury High School, where she no doubt learnt many of the tricks of the trade from the headmaster, Mr Peter Turner. She was also deputy, and perhaps even acting principal of Gepps Cross Girls High, positions held with distinction by so very many other female administrators in the weeks before and after her appointment.
To the students, she must have seemed an aloof figure, hiding as she did, her warm heart behind a stern countenance, but it was this single minded devotion to discipline that has made Windsor Gardens the “PAC of the North East” as it is known. Similarly, Anne’s devotion to scholastic excellence (a natural offshoot of her own deeply intellectual and academic nature) was the springboard for the manifold successes of our students in the world of PES exams.
To the staff, Anne was like a rock. Her support of her staff was legendary, as was her loyalty. Indeed, this loyalty assumed all the qualities of a myth. Her ability to spot talent in others verged on the miraculous. Who else could have seen greatness, or indeed, even competence, in Liz Mead, Paulette Sargent, and above all, Angela Falkenburg?
Along with a talent for innovation, Anne revealed bulldog tenacity. Never did she take on a job without seeing it through to the bitter end. Anne also, unlike some, far too frequently chose to hide her own light under a bushel. She shunned publicity and the limelight, preferring to allow her efforts to speak for themselves. Where a lesser administrator might have expended school funds on costly “launches” for new projects, she resisted this temptation.
If Anne had a fault, it was perhaps that she was too independent of the Department. All too often, she would, after the deepest thought and intellectual analysis, choose to go her own way, seeking truth rather than a good reputation. Obviously, in their wisdom, our highest administrators have seen that beneath the outward appearance of the young firebrand, there is a “Department mentality” lurking, and have acted upon it.
Perhaps though, she will live longest in our minds as an inspiring public speaker, whose performances at assemblies rang like clarion calls of reason, comparable only to the “Philippics” of Demosthenes (of whom, surprisingly, she had never heard).

Let us then conclude this farewell by praising Anne Millard, and acknowledge her as one of the reasons why education is in the shape it is today!

AVE ATQUE VALE

Farewell to Ms Anne Millard