By CASEY NEILL
ALKIRA Secondary College received a top honour in this year’s Anzac Day Schools’ Awards.
The Cranbourne school took home $2000 as the Victorian secondary college winner.
It held a whole-school assembly on Monday 28 April with special guests including MPs and veterans.
Student Representative Council leader and VCAL teacher Nicole Scott said the Turkish Vice-Consul also attended.
“We also ran a ceremony at Hillsmead Primary School and our VCAL students collected artefacts from the veterans and made them into what we call discovery boxes,” she said.
“It’s a way to find out about the veterans through artefacts rather than written stories.”
Alkira has now twice been the competition’s state winner and last year was state runner-up as well as claiming the national Best Veteran and Community Involvement Award.
“We’re in the process of building a memorial garden,” Ms Scott said.
“And on Friday our year 12 VCAL students are going with their veterans to Seymour to the Vietnam veterans’ memorial there and to Puckapunyal.”
Endeavour Hills’s Mossgiel Park Primary School was the Victorian runner-up in the primary schools section and won $500.
The awards are designed to encourage initiative and creativity in the way schools commemorate Anzac Day.
The Veterans’ Affairs Minister and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac Michael Ronaldson announced and congratulated the winners on 28 July.
“With the Anzac Centenary almost upon us, now is the time to reflect, as these schools have done, on the contribution of the men and women who left our shores bound for the First World War and all those who have followed in their footsteps in the 100 years since,” he said.
For more information visit www.dva.gov.au/schoolsawards.
