Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to commend St Stephen's School, the Carramar campus, for their national success in the primary school's competition of the Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards. St Stephen's School received the Sheila Baxter Award, which is presented to primary schools. There were nearly 10,000 entries received from 655 schools throughout Australia. In particular, I acknowledge the great support of the teachers: Sandra Corcoran, a St Stephen's School's pre-primary teacher; Daniela Calabro, also a pre-primary teacher; and Nicola Byrne, a year 6 teacher there.

I was fortunate enough to visit the school, and I was able to read out loud to the pre-primary children some of their poems. Those that were commended for their great work were Ivy George for Easter Bunny, Olivia Edwards for Unicorns, Xavier Byrne for How do Leaves Change Colour?, Connor Hoggart for A Winter Tree, Jocelyn Newman for Cat, and Raphael Sarkis for Dragons.

St Stephen's is a very good independent school in the north of Cowan. I congratulate them on their success, particularly the pre-primaries and also the year 6s who were involved for a wonderful effort. They really did such great work in this competition.

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