Principal's Update

Principals Update

As part of Education State initiative, the Victorian Government ‘aims to set students up for happy, healthy and prosperous lives by promoting resilience and physical activity’. To meet this target, all government secondary schools will have access to a mental health professional. Their role is to provide direct counselling and other intervention services to students. Mornington Secondary College has advertised for a Psychologist under this initiative and the advertisement closes next week (recruitment online). The successful candidate will be employed fulltime and funding for this position is for 3 years.

Staffing is also being considered as we work on developing the new timetable for 2020. All students have selected their subjects and many interviews have taken place to ensure all students have a course suited to their needs. For some students, they may need to choose again as subjects may be full or not available.

The College is introducing an interactive computer program called Edrolo. This program is designed for students in senior school. The contents of the program will support most of the subjects offered at senior school and is to be used as additional support outside of the classroom.  All subjects offered in Edrolo have been designed using the most up to date study designs from VCAA.  The program will be embedded into the Year 12 course for 2020. To support its implementation, Edrolo will be introduced to all current Year 11 students this year, so next year all Year 12 students are extremely confident in its use. The current Year 12 students will also have access to Edrolo this year.  This will support many of the students leading up to exams. Edrolo is designed for independent learning and can be used to further support their learning at home.

The tour of Yogyakarta was a huge success and students were able to fully immerse themselves in the Indonesian culture. One day they were paired with a student from the University of Islam and had to go to the market and collect ingredients to cook up a feast. There were many challenges with this one activity. Working out the money conversion, finding the ingredients at the market, speaking Indonesian to the stall holders and then cooking using recipes in Indonesian. A real life experience, one they will always remember.

Last week the interschool chess championship was held at the College, with 90 students from 9 schools competing. Mornington Secondary College placed third and were great representatives of our College.

I will be escorting 18 students and 2 staff members to Osaka, Japan, 14th September, 2019. Our relationship with Osaka is due to the Sister city relationship Melbourne CBD has. This relationship formed over 20 years ago and the education section of this relationship is with Mornington Secondary College. Our students will be fully immersed in the Japanese culture and will live in traditional Japanese homes. During our time overseas, we will be visiting Hiroshima and Miyajima Island. The days we spend in Osaka, will see all students attend school with their host buddy and the staff will visit each one of them at their school. We will arrive home 28th September. 

Have a great holiday and I look forward to sharing pictures of Japan.

Linda Stanton