Term 3 is well underway with Year 12 sitting their Trial HSC examinations and Year 11 getting ready for theirs next month. We began with few absences by staff and students but sadly, the numbers are rising again. Our apologies to parents who turned up for the Secondary parent/teacher interviews only to discover the teacher wasn’t there – we had last minute sickness and a family emergency to deal with. Feel free to email those teachers and arrange a phone or zoom interview with them.

 From time to time, I get a parent complaint about some aspect of school life. This is to be expected in a large school like ours and I welcome your contact so that we can address issues that do arise. As I have written to you before, we have embarked on a journey of improvement but there is still a way to go. Your feedback is very helpful to us in knowing where to focus our attention.

This past week we applied for a research grant totalling almost $100,000 and are very hopeful of getting it. You will recall that we employed an Academic in Residence last year, Dr Martin Dowson whose role is to help us lift our academic performance and ensure that all we do is well informed by relevant and current research. He has spearheaded the application for a grant to work with our mathematics teachers across Years 6 – 9 (the middle years of schooling) focusing on student engagement and intervention strategies to lift engagement and so results. This builds on the back of the Primary teachers’ participation this year in a Numeracy project run by the Association of Independent Schools.

With Dr Dowson’s help we are also looking at how we can track individual students’ academic results across the years to pick up on any students who are falling behind and identify those with significant ability who can do with some extra support and/or extension. Our teachers continue to focus on Wednesday afternoons on teaching and learning practices that will grow them as professionals. Like any profession, there is always progress being made in approaches to the task of teaching and new ideas to be explored. Teachers are also expected to be life-long learners.

Starting from this term, we are focusing our Secondary weekly assemblies on celebrating student success across a range of activities including academics in an effort to encourage them to strive for success and also to celebrate the achievements of others. The Scriptures speak often of us being in community, connected just like our body parts are. When one part is successful, the whole community benefits from that success. So, as a school, we share in the success of others and our responsibility is to contribute to that success.

We look forward to these initiatives bearing good fruit in the lives and the academic results of our students. You can help by talking to your child about the importance of doing their best, making the most of learning opportunities, supporting the learning of others and seeing the classroom as a workplace. Coming to school for students is the equivalent of going to work - the pay is found in the future opportunities good learning brings and in being better equipped to face life’s challenges.

Phillip Nash

Principal