Edition Two

Investigation by Sam Gresham and Lachlan Rennie

Large institutions such as Newington College are struggling under the pressure of rising power bills. We decided to investigate how the College is keeping the lights on at this time of power price mania.

Electricity and gas prices are expected to increase up to 20% for residential and business customers over the next 12 months. These price rises, resulting from an increase in the cost of coal, has caused the College to be under greater pressure to continue to balance increased electrical needs and ever increasing bills.   As a result, there is now a significant push from the College to increase expenditure on more sustainable forms of energy.

We asked Newington College’s headmaster, Dr David Mulford, to comment on the rising prices and how Newington is reacting. He mentioned that Newington aims to be fully sustainable within five years, a feat which has already been achieved in the school’s Wyvern preparatory campus upgrade through the installation and use solar panels, and insulative glass.

The Headmaster also mentioned that the College is continuing to install solar panels: “Every time we build, we now add solar panels… we also did the sports centre and library.” The headmaster also talked about other measures that are being put in place to reduce reliance on the expensive power grid. These measures included smarter, more efficient light bulbs; timers for heaters and lights and greywater recycling system underneath the college’s new Tupou College Centre. The College has also implemented screens around the campus to “show the boys a demonstration [of] what happens [within the school].”

The headmaster also commented on recycling, the identified shortfall of the Newington sustainability plan. “An area which we are not good at, and the students are not good at, is recycling. It’s very hard to get the students to do the right thing.”

If one thing is clear, it is that the College is attempting to increase awareness of sustainability around the College, but it has not been, and will not be easy. However, as Dr David Mulford said, sustainability at the College has not been wholly for the environment, but as a tactic to combat the increasing energy prices that the College faces.

A look back at Doctor Mulford’s career and time as headmaster of Newington college in wake of his retirement announcement.

By Calum Boland and Oliver Cleary

Doctor Mulford has had an extraordinary career and influenced many lives, not least over his ten-year span as the Headmaster of Newington College. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he has changed the lives of the students and the teachers over his time here. He has also impacted the community and the school with his heightened focus on moulding the students into, not just good scholars, but good people.

Dr Mulford took the job because he “loved the diversity, the fact that there were people from all walks of life and that it was different from a traditional GPS school.” He liked that “there was an encouragement not to be stereotyped, that people could be whatever they wanted to be and in any combination of that.” He took this core ethos of acceptance to heart and set out to build a better school community.

The school, under his guidance, has seen a new focus placed onto co-curricular activities with the buildings of new spaces and the hiring of engaged teachers playing a huge part in that. He sees his role to the school as “getting the right people to do the right jobs… who love their areas of teaching or co-curricular.” In his own words all he really does is “nurture the staff and encourage them to go for it and to pursue excellence and engagement with the boys.” The choir is an example of this. Before the appointment of Doctor Mulford the choir had 20 people, and with encouragement and support, now it has 120 people.

Another feature of his tenure has been the substantial building renovation works. In the first 3 years of his time at Newington, the school has spent $78 million dollars on capital works. This is more than any other school in nsw. He has spent $20 million on the building of a new library and cafeteria space for the boys in 2013 and in 2016 the construction of the Tupou College centre and drama centre. The headmaster sees this as developing specialist spaces to let people be themselves and to have teachers and students “be inspired” and the be themselves and to “do whatever they wanted.”

Over his time at Newington, Doctor Mulford has done a lot of things but his main goal is on making students into good people. He has repeatedly spoken about how we need to be resilient and strive for greatness wherever we go. Upon his retirement Doctor Mulford said that if there was one thing he wanted all students to learn as a school it was “To be a good person. To be a great contributor to their family, to their local community to their national community. It could be anything but it’s a man of substance it’s got to be personal. He should be a man of integrity. He should be a good citizen and a good man.”

Doctor Mulford is a great leader and a man of strong values. He has made Newington into an even more vibrant community and had made it into a place where students can be whatever they want to be and can learn to be men of substance and help out people in worse situations than their own and to fully discover what’s possible.