Serena Kirby, Denmark Bulletin

Denmark Primary School’s new principal Luke Breman aims to bring calm and stable leadership to the school.

Luke (right) stepped into the top job four weeks ago to take over from Helen Spencer who’d been acting in the role since the departure of previous principal Damian Luscombe.

Luke has spent 23 years in leadership roles and for the past 14 years he was principal at Dampier Primary School.

“It was a wonderful community and my family and I were very sad to leave,” Luke said.

“We had a long trip to get down here as my wife and I travelled 2000km in three days and we brought three pets and two of our daughters with us.”

The town’s housing shortage has meant that Luke and his family are in temporary farm-stay accommodation while the Education Department secures something more permanent.

Denmark Primary School has more than 460 students with about 80 of those being year six students making it the school’s largest cohort heading into high school next year.

“Hopefully I’ll bring stability to the school as I think the best thing schools can have is stable leadership,” Luke said.

“I’m also a very calm person and I want the school to be a calm but fun place to learn.”

Luke said there would be a renewed focus on quality, evidence-based teaching programs across the whole school.

Literacy and numeracy were key areas Luke said the school could always improve in. Luke and his family have felt warmly welcomed by the school community and he joked that it would take him some time to acclimatise to the colder weather.

“I’ve spent the past 21 years living above the 26 parallel so we definitely need to buy warmer clothes while we wait for our blood to thicken up,” he said.

This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 13 June 2024.