From the Archives

In this From the Archives newsletter article, we congratulate and celebrate the appointment of the 2024 Student Leadership team. 

What a privilege and an amazing opportunity to be a part of leading the 2024 cohort and the MLMC student body. I have delved into the College Archives to look at what I could find on the history of this important aspect of student life at the College.

What I found was interesting in that there have long been the key positions of Head Prefects and the like, however, the Student Leadership body has also evolved over time. Extra positions have been added as the needs of the College evolved and they continue to be added when required.

In the early days, when the College was a girls’ school, the College had a Head Prefect, Vice Head Prefect, House and Sports Captains. The oldest yearbook that we have in our archives is the 1972 annual. In this yearbook, the message from the Head Prefect was similar to those from many of our Head Prefects and Captains — it was a busy year, with lots to organise, and thank you to those that helped in the community. Just a few short years later, Mount Lilydale changed to become a coeducational institution and, thus, in 1976 we see the first boy and girl school captains.

During the 1980s, the College again had the key student leaders, School Captains, Vice Captains along with a Student Representative Council (SRC) group (the 1985 leaders are pictured above), and this was most consistent during the 1990s.

It was not until 1999, under the leadership of Principal Mr Bernard Dobson, that the Prefect system evolved again and we have the Student Leadership team that we have today. The College now has numerous positions of leadership and Prefect positions, as well as an SRC group.

We wish the best of luck to the College Captains, Vice Captains and Prefects named to lead us in 2024. They are all listed in the From the Principal article in this newsletter.