We enter the final week of Term 3 and the last week of school for our Year 12 students. In spite of the sudden announcement of the public holiday this Thursday to mourn the passing of our Queen, we have been able to shift the graduation to Friday. This is a special week for Year 12 with a number of final activities as they celebrate the end of 13 years of schooling and prepare for their final examinations. We wish them every success with those and our teachers stand by to help with last minute preparation.

As we look to improve the academics of our school, I want to refer back to something I wrote a few weeks ago in this newsletter. I suggested that students (and parents) should think of schooling, especially at the Secondary level, as a student’s employment. They should treat coming to school just as they would going to work.  Turn up on time, work hard, take instruction, and follow orders, make a positive contribution and the reward is the satisfaction of a job well done and doors of opportunity opening for the future.

We plan to work with our Years 11 and 12 students going forward on using their study periods more productively. We provide a lovely space in our library for them to work and this year we have offered group coaching in exam preparation and study and individual tutoring sessions. Sadly, the uptake was not great!  We plan to work on that with the incoming Year 12's and the 2023 Year 11’s.

Academic success requires two key factors – quality teaching and an engaged student. We are working with our teachers on growing their abilities, but as we know, you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. This is where we can partner together. When you are aware there is an opportunity for additional support for your child, you can ensure you encourage them to take it up. An employee who refuses to accept upskilling offered by an employer, has a limited career path and closes off future options. We want success for our students and will do more to help them achieve it. What we want from them is a willingness to take up the help and put in the effort needed.

This of course starts at the beginning of schooling. Ensuring we are working with our Kindy child to read to them. Listening to them read and helping them learn their  words and numbers, is all part of encouraging in them a work/study ethic that will serve them well in the future. This needs to be sustained right through the years and especially as they enter high school. It is a well-known fact that academic performance often drops off in Years 7 – 9 as puberty takes over and socialisation becomes more important than learning.

It is as we work together to keep our young teenagers focused on what they are learning at school that will make the difference. Limiting screen time at home and school is all part of that. Talking with them about what they are learning and why, taking an interest in their projects and working with the teachers on behaviour issues all helps.

I had the joy recently of talking with a student in Junior Secondary who has been finding school and life very hard lately. But she is now discovering the joy of success and was very excited to tell me how well she did in a recent Science exam when she had studied for it for the first time! That is now spilling over into other assessment tasks in other subjects. I know her dad is very proud of her too!

It is as we work together that we can help our students (your children) experience success in academics.

Phillip Nash

Principal