Introduction:

Our official sister school relationship with Collège de Tuband in Nouméa, New Caledonia was established in 2022. However, McKinnon students had already been sharing penfriend letters with Tuband students in 2020 and 2021, allowing us to maintain contact with the French-speaking world through the pandemic.  We are very fortunate to have this connection with a French-speaking territory in the Pacific that is only a three hour flight from Melbourne.

Maintaining contacts:

Our first exchange was a visit from Tuband students to our East campus in September 2023. For this visit, McKinnon families accommodated students from College de Tuband in their homes.We hope to make this an event which recurs every second year. 

A ‘collège’ in French terms has classes from the equivalent of year 7 to year 9, so Tuband is a much smaller school than McKinnon and many of the students live in smaller homes. When our year 9 French students visit New Caledonia, we are not able to organise home stays directly with them. Instead, we organise for our students to visit the school, experience their typical school day and continue to build on  friendships.

 As we are in the same time zone in summer, and only one hour behind in winter,maintaining contact is much easier than with schools in France.

https://webtuband.ac-noumea.nc/ 

Our sister school arrangement was ratified by the Commonwealth in 2025. It will be due for renewal in 2030.