Glenorie Public School has had a busy start to 2026, with students turning up at swimming carnivals, environmental lagoons, and public speaking stages across the Hills District.
The school’s Beecroft Zone Swimming Carnival team drew notice this term — not just for the races themselves, but for the way students carried themselves throughout the day. Competitive swimming at the zone level is no small thing for a rural school, and the effort showed.
Five students also spent time at Longneck Lagoon Environmental Education Centre, west of Sydney, where they went dip-netting in the shallows and wrote poetry about what they found. It’s the kind of field trip that sounds straightforward on paper but tends to stick with kids long after the bus ride home. The lagoon’s education team was impressed enough to offer to publish the students’ work on their website — a proper public audience, not just a classroom wall.
Then came the Multicultural Perspectives Public Speaking Competition, where students tackled subjects including family migration stories, peace, and racism. Four of them advanced to the local finals. These aren’t comfortable topics to stand up and talk about in front of a crowd, and the students handled them seriously.
The school serves a semi-rural community north of Sydney, and its 2026 program reflects a deliberate push to get students out of the classroom and into real-world situations — whether that’s a competitive pool, a wetland, or a microphone.
