General News
29 December, 2025
School chief reveals plans
NEWLY-appointed Good Counsel College principal Paul Melloy, who has 37 years of educational experience, has outlined his plans for the Innisfail campus.
Mr Melloy said his core focus at the school was prioritising maths and English for year seven to 10 students and setting up differentiated learning structure, so all students could work at their own level.
“My future vision for the college is improvement across all areas, such as staff, structural and finance,” he said.
“The traditional holistic education provided in the Marist tradition at Good Counsel College, not only encourages students to achieve academically, but also spiritually, socially, psychologically and physically.”
To be a good principal, Mr Melloy believes honesty and integrity equals trustworthiness and his career highlights have included academic success at Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, especially for Māori and Pacific Islands students, and setting up four sports academies at St John’s College in Hastings, NZ.
Since his Innisfail appointment, Mr Melloy has been successful in establishing a partnership with Liverpool Football Club International Academy Australia in July, as well as the Brisbane Tigers rugby league academy at Good Counsel College, which will commence in January 2026.
Mr Melloy was born in Zambia to Scottish parents and raised in South Africa.
In 1977, at the age of 14 his parents returned to Scotland.
He attended a Marist Brothers college in South Africa and finished his secondary schooling in Perth, Scotland.
During his schooling in South Africa, he received top level coaching in swimming, water polo, cricket and rugby union.
Prior to becoming a teacher, Mr Melloy worked as a waiter, as well as a labourer on building sites in London.
“I was leaning towards law and business, and it was not until my last six months at high school when I decided I wanted to coach sports.”
After Mr Melloy completed a Bachelor of Education in Human Movement in Scotland, he travelled for two years, before his first teaching role in 1988 at Waltham Forest in eastern London.
This challenging teaching experience provided him with high learning in behaviour and management which set him up well for his future career.
Not long after he married, Mr Melloy spent six years teaching at an international school in Abu Dhabi which had 2800 students aged three to 18 years.
After immigrating to New Zealand, where he lived for 24 years, he worked for 18 years at Sacred Heart College in Auckland, a Catholic Marist college.
His first principal’s role was at St John’s College, Hastings, New Zealand which had 383 boys from 2014-2019.
This was followed by four years at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Catholic College in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory from 2020-2023.
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