Strengthening Culture of Achievement

My ongoing mantra to everyone here has been to set ‘High Expectations’ in everything we do, high expectations of our own performance and of those we influence, whether we are student, teacher or parent. Underpinning this focus are our core values of Personal Best, Integrity, Respect and Responsibility. It is so important that they continue to be evident in how we all work together throughout the year.

We are continuing to see the benefits of the College’s emphasis on high expectations and should be proud of our school and the results achieved last year. We are above the state average for value adding in NAPLAN; we are well above the state average on the student attitudes to school survey, in fact in the top 25% of the state on variables such as Teacher effectiveness and empathy, Stimulating learning, Student safety and Connectedness to Peers to name a few; we had very positive results on the Parent opinion survey; all Year 12 students applying for a tertiary placement were successful with 100% getting a first round offer, which is fantastic; and endorsing the College’s growing reputation as a leading education provider in the area is the large increase in our Year 7 enrolments for the second year in a row.

As a school community focused on achieving the best possible outcomes for all of our students we need to continually reflect and seek improvement in everything we do. This year is the final year of our current Strategic Plan (2013-2016) and as such, as part of the accountability cycle set for Victorian Government Schools, we will be undergoing an external review this year to reflect on the past 3-4 years performance in relation to our key improvement strategies and key data sets. We will then work on developing a new strategic plan for the ongoing improvement of our College and provision of an excellent education for all of our students. I will provide more information about this process in the next month.

Our Key Improvement Strategies for 2016 are to:

Continue to develop teacher capacity at all levels with particular emphasis on differentiated learning and assessment

Continue to focus on numeracy improvement Years 7-12

Continue to build a culture of achievement and high expectations, whilst maintaining an orderly and positive learning environment

Continue to ensure the provision of a comprehensive Year 7 to 12 program that provides the widest possible range of pathways in the later years

Develop a set of precise teaching skills in teachers through building consistency and quality of teaching practice across the school to lower instances of in school variation in student performance

Ms Michelle Roberts

Principal