VCE results and DUX 2020
This year students will be receiving their results on the morning of Wednesday 30 December. Emma White, our Pathways Coordinator, Jo Greenhalgh, Director of Senior School, and I will be onsite to congratulate students who want to visit to celebrate and, most importantly, for any students who need to speak to Emma or Jo regarding advice on change of preferences for their choice of university or TAFE and courses. There will be an appointment schedule set up for this day that the Senior School team will communicate to our Year 12 students. Once I get approval from the Dux to release their name, I will organise for this to be posted on social media and will send an email out to all families to announce.
Awards Night
To recognise and celebrate the achievements of our students across all year levels this year, we prepared a pre-recorded video which I released to all parents, carers and students on Wednesday 9 December via Compass. Please refer to this email for the link if you still haven’t had the opportunity to watch. The video will be permanently stored on our YouTube channel. Included in my email was also the program listing all of our student award winners. Students who were nominated for Academic Excellence Awards, Sport Awards, Music and Art awards, various subject awards and our special sponsored awards were all recognised in our video. Although it looks very different to our usual event at the Moorabbin Town Hall, mainly due to mandated instructions from the Department at the time of recording that we all needed to wear masks unless giving a speech, it was still really important that we took the time to recognise our students’ efforts, positive work ethic and achievements in this extraordinary year. Our School Captains, Elisa Barone and Jack Phillpotts, were our MCs for this event and did a terrific job. They also gave very thoughtful speeches.
I would like to highlight our Dux award for each year level based on close examination of achievement data over the year to determine the highest performing student. The Dux for each year level was only revealed at the time of recording and, even though you may not have been able to notice on the video (due to mask wearing), there was genuine joy and excitement from each winner. After we stopped filming this section the rest of their year level, who had received an award, all gathered around the winner to congratulate them.
Building Program and Construction Site in 2021
From the recent tender process, Neo Construct has been awarded our project of building a two storey Year 7 & 8 Learning Centre. This appointment was made by the Victorian School Building Authority (VSBA). We have met with them this week and they will be setting up in January to have the construction site ready for Stage 1, which is at the Year 7 end of the school. This just involves building the new bike shed and a new locker shed. Once these are constructed, the cricket nets, old bike shed and current Year 8 locker shed will be removed, and the Stage 2 construction site will be set up for our new two storey Year 7 & 8 Learning Centre. At this time, the main entry and exit points of the school off the walking track near the Discovery Centre will be blocked off for the rest of the year. Students coming from the train station, bus stop or from biking or walking along the track will need to proceed to the current Year 7 Learning Centre end of the school to enter or use the entrance on Attenborough Road. As we get closer to this happening, we will distribute our school map showing the temporary out of bounds areas and construction zone to students and families.
It’s Academic
An event we always look forward to is the annual Mordialloc College Academic Challenge for our feeder primary schools’ Grade 5 students. This was held on Friday 4 December online due to the restrictions in place at the time. The event was run by our Middle School Captains. This year we had four of our feeder primary schools competing – Chelsea Heights PS, Bonbeach PS, Chelsea PS and Mordialloc Beach PS. It not only offers a unique taste of secondary school life, while making learning fun and relevant, it also provides valuable leadership and event management skills for our Year 9 Middle School leaders.
Congratulations to Chelsea PS who were the winners this year, closely followed by Chelsea Heights PS who were second (by one point!). Thanks to Director of Middle School, Daniel Williams, and our Middle School captains, Madi Galland, Jeremy Thai-Chan, Jasmine Cane and Thomas Toth for organising the event. Daniel will be visiting each primary school that participated this week to deliver the certificates and medals, along with the big trophy for first place that the winning school gets to keep in their school for a year, until the next event.
School Magazine
All students should have received a copy of our 2020 Venture School Magazine last Friday during last period – a valuable memento for all students. Year 12 students can come in and collect their copy from the Senior School Office or Reception and any other student who missed out can also collect a copy from Reception. My thanks to teacher, James Nicklen, for leading the development of this year’s magazine.
Richard Williams Scholarship Fund for Mordialloc College students
Please see page 4 of the Alumni newsletter (link below) to learn more about this opportunity for one of our students in 2021, and then in subsequent years. Applications have opened and will close on 01 March 2021. Richard Williams was an unsung local hero. He worked tirelessly for others and always put other people before himself. After his passing this year a few of his close friends, who have known him since they were students here together, got together to create this Scholarship Fund in his memory. On behalf of our students I thank the Alumni for working with Richard’s friends to set up this fund.
Ms. Michelle Roberts
Principal