Welcome to Term 3!

Recently the Government announced the results of a major curriculum review into the NSW school curriculum. As the world changes, it is important education systems keep up. We begin formally educating a child in preschool and after about 15 years of schooling, the world they enter is very different to what it was when they started. The curriculum that was in vogue when they started may no longer be helpful to them by the time they graduate.

Around the world, many educators are calling for major overhauls of curricular to take into account the very different world our students will enter in the coming years. At GPCC we welcome this review and want to ensure we are at the forefront of the changes that will be required as we move further into the 21st century. Many are calling for a paradigm shift in education away from the old ‘factory model’ of education (filling student’s heads with knowledge and pushing age cohorts through the machine whether they have learnt or not) to a more personalised and competency based approach (teaching students how to learn and equipping them with the competencies to keep on learning and applying new knowledge).

As part of our move towards this new approach, we have launched, with a trial group of nearly 30 teachers, a project to look at how we can blend the use of technology and the tried and tested "best practice" methods of good face to face teaching. This will see a change from a teacher dominated approach to learning, to a more student focused approach, where teacher and student collaborate on a more individualised learning pathway.

Blended learning is defined by us as "a collaboration between student and teacher involving the use of on-line and face to face and fieldwork. It incorporates elements of student control over place, time, pace and path, by which a student follows a more individualised learning process towards explicit formational outcomes."

Our trial group of teachers will begin to implement changes to the way learning is undertaken in classrooms now and as we settle on effective approaches at different levels and in different faculties, these will be more widely implemented. This is not an overnight transformation but a planned and careful experiment with new approaches to ensure we get it right. We will keep you well informed of the project as it goes along.

Educational changes are often foisted upon schools whether they are ready for them or not. I would rather GPCC was ahead of the game than playing catch-up. We are still required to implement the NSW curriculum and will continue to do so but in new and more student appropriate ways.

The home learning period in recent months, taught us that we can do things differently and so we want to capture the momentum of that crisis and use it to propel us toward a more effective future for our students. We look forward to your support on this exciting journey.

Phillip Nash

Principal