Reflections as Ballarat Clarendon College principal retires after 27 years

His tenure has seen massive change at the school, both in facilities and the number of students, and a shift in the life pressures that students face and what communities expect from their schools.

"There is more pressure on young people because of social media, because of the ease of access, because of our phones, cameras that can take photos at any time and I think that inevitably is going to affect a school. We are not immune from the movement of societal trends," Mr Shepherd said.

Add to that the ongoing impact of the pandemic, mental health challenges and navigating future pathway.

"Schools are working very hard to try and manage that, but there is a lot of pressure on, there's a lot expected of schools. I think that's one thing that I've noticed in my time, and I've been in the game 43 years, there's a lot greater expectation on what schools can try and do. And there is a limit to that," Mr Shepherd said.

"Schools are obviously having to deal a lot more now with mental health and wellbeing and that's a societal issue we are working through. There's nothing more important. The most important thing for any school is the care of kids ... and if we can make them feel as if they're safe, they feel connected, they feel they belong, they've got advocates for them, and they've got some friends, then you've got a chance to do the learning.

"If you can get kids feeling good about themselves, then I think they can achieve quite extraordinary things. Our students at school have proved that."

When Mr Shepherd arrived at Ballarat Clarendon College it was not long after the recession of the early 1990s. The school was struggling and the number of students was in the 500s.

"That was in some ways quite a useful place to start because we could only sort of go one way, but it was also a little bit scary because I'd been used to being in bigger schools," he said.

Next year there will be 1970 students at the school, just shy of the maximum 2000 that Mr Shepherd and the school board feel is the cap.

"We've reached that level much quicker than we ever expected," he said.

"Now we've got buildings that are really state of the art. We've had one architect for most of that time, Peter Williams, and he's a genius, beautiful facilities, a much larger staff and a staff whose expertise is second to none I think in Australia."

Arriving at the school he set about building a strong leadership and teaching team with a focus on adopting evidence and research based educational practice.

"There is research out there that is very clear on the most effective ways to instruct young people in their learning in a variety of areas. I just think if we don't follow the research and the evidence-based approaches, then I just think we are doing a disservice to our young people," he said.

"Often improvement looks incremental in time, but radical over time.

"Every now and then you can go down what you think is an innovation, but it's a cul-de-sac, and then you've got to back out and away you go. And sometimes the hard work takes a bit of time to reward itself down the track and come to fruition."

Each year 20 to 30 schools visit Clarendon to learn more about how they achieve their success.

"We are happy to share our expertise so that hopefully other places can improve their practice because in the end, we're all in the game of trying to educate Australia's young," Mr Shepherd said.

"And when they don't get the education they need, I think that's terribly sad for our country. My job is to look after obviously the kids here, but we all have a responsibility for everybody."

The past few years have been challenging not just in negotiating education through a pandemic but weathering investigations into accusations of bullying, harassment, sexism and misogyny raised by an anonymous whistleblower.

"I believe in the process. I think it's really important that we have transparent open processes, like a whistleblower process for people to be able to bring forward concerns that they don't believe are being dealt with," Mr Shepherd said.

"The difficulty with that is that we've also got a situation now where anonymous people can make any accusation and any allegation about anything. And in this particular case, for me, it was complicated because I was going through treatment for a health issue."

Mr Shepherd said he found the allegations, over which he was exonerated, upsetting for himself and his family.

"It was difficult, but in some ways maybe we will look back on it as being a good thing for us in that it required us to reflect on a whole lot of things. And we've changed bits and pieces. We are not perfect.

"If you only look at these things as a negative thing and become totally defensive about them, albeit that's a pretty human response, ... it's missing an opportunity.

"We've done a lot of reviewing of policies and procedures and good has come out of it and good will come out of it. You just can't spend your time looking backwards all the time."

Mr Shepherd said his drive, from the day he was appointed, had always been to provide the best educational experience for regional students.

"(The board) saw that my vision was always for regional kids in Australia didn't have to be negatively affected by living in the regions. There was no reason for that. And that we wanted to be an outward looking school, rejoicing in the fact that we were based in a regional center, but outward looking and the world is their oyster," he said.

Mr Shepherd never planned to be in Ballarat this long, but after moving from Adelaide with his wife and their three young children they found it a "wonderful place to bring up kids".

"We thought this would be a stop on the way through to probably heading back to Melbourne, where we are from," he said.

"Being principal, the days sometimes seem to go forever. The years have just flown by, and all of a sudden you blink and here we are 27 years later."

Ballarat itself has changed too, and Mr Shepherd is proud of the school's role and standing within the community having grown alongside the city's population over the decades.

"It's a completely different school, but also a different Ballarat. It was coming out of the recession of the early 1990s and it wasn't struggling but it was a town of former grandeur that wasn't as shiny as it had been, but now it's just wonderful ... there's just stuff happening and there's people wanting to come here," Mr Shepherd said.

"The pandemic obviously got people to reflect on what they want out of their lives, and there are wonderful places to live like Ballarat that have been discovered. And I think the great thing about Ballarat with its education - tertiary education, secondary education, primary education and early education - and medical/health area it just fits together so well."

That gratitude is something he tried to pass on to students.

"I want the kids to be optimistic about their future because there's a great future in front of them," he said.

"They also need to understand that to whom much is given, much is expected. And if you live in Australia you're lucky, if you live in Ballarat, you're lucky, if you come to this school you're very fortunate and you shouldn't carry that round as a chip on your shoulder, but you ... have a responsibility to give back to the community and society to make it a better place.

"This notion of their social conscience, social justice, it's very important to us and we try and work as hard as we can to make certain they understand they need to give back - if they come back to Ballarat to give to this community and if they don't come back to Ballarat, be part of wherever their community happens to be."

Mr Shepherd said it was "just time" for him to step away from the workload of running a large school and spend more time with his wife, children and five grandchildren - but he's not cutting his ties from Ballarat Clarendon College completely despite moving back to Melbourne.

"I'm still pretty keen to be involved. I'll be remaining on the college board of directors and hope to be able to use some of what I've learned to perhaps help (consult) at other places with their improvement strategies," Mr Shepherd said.

His biggest achievement is the thousands of students who have come through the school and gone on to successful futures, whatever that may look like.

"The most important thing to me is that the thousands of kids that have come through, and I don't want to sound corny about it, that have been able to pursue their heart's desire - that we've enabled them to become the best version of themselves," Mr Shepherd said.

"They can go off and do whatever it is that they want to do."