College Head of Learning
End of Semester Reports
Parents of students from Prep to Year 11 will be issued an end of semester report at 4pm on Friday 11 December, which can be accessed via the Community Portal. The report is intended as a summary of student achievement in all subjects throughout Semester Two. Further details about individual assessment tasks, including assessment criteria and comments about the progress a student is making and areas for further improvement, can be found on My Aitken in the “Marks and Feedback” section for each of your children.
The challenges of 2020 and Home Learning have had an enormous impact on many people in our community. Our students have had to be much more organised and determined than usual to make the most of Home Learning. Many of our students have thrived, showing levels of independence and maturity that have been very impressive. However, a small number of students have understandably struggled with their mental health, motivation and/or work ethic, to the extent that they have been prevented from attaining grades which are normally regarded as ‘Satisfactory’.
For Semester Two 2020, we have created a new result grading of ‘P’ for students in Year 7 to Year 10, to recognise that in some cases, while their task scores might be quite low, students have participated in classes and should not be penalised for missed or only partially completed assessment tasks during an incredibly difficult time. The ‘P’ grade is the equivalent of what some university courses refer to as a ‘conceded pass’, which grants a ‘pass’ despite some incomplete or missing assessment.
For students in Prep to Year 6, our regular rating system can accommodate students who may have experienced abnormally difficult circumstances. For students in VCE and VCAL, we are not allowed to make such concessions in the grading of assessment tasks. Instead, where needed, teachers used alternative assessment tasks to determine that students had met the minimum VCAA requirements for an ‘S’ result.
It is our fervent hope that 2021 will see a complete and uninterrupted return to learning at school, and the ‘P’ grade will no longer be required.
Some other minor changes to assessment items on the 2020 reports are:
- Student work in Physical Education has been assessed as satisfactory (S) or not satisfactory (N) for students in Prep to Year 9, due to the difficulty of assessing practical PE tasks via Zoom.
- Library has not been assessed for students in Prep to Year 4 due to the cancellation of library visits during Home Learning.
All of these details will be summarised on page 2 of the Semester Two Reports.
The most important thing to consider at the end of 2020 is that our students (and parents, in many cases!) have done a phenomenal job of remaining connected with their learning and school engagement during the pandemic, which is worthy of great celebration and praise.
All students in Prep to Year 9 have (or will soon have) completed standardised PAT tests in Reading Comprehension and Numeracy, which will give us a very good indication of how much progress our students made during 2020 in these two very important areas of academic development. We will be using data from these tests to determine which students, if any, will need additional help in 2021 to make up any ground lost during the challenges of Home Learning.
iPad/Macbook Onboarding for 2021
Students with new ICT devices (iPads and Macbooks) for 2021 will need to prepare them for use at school during the January holidays. Information about how to connect to the College wi-fi, how to install the required security certificates and how to set up email and My Aitken access will be provided to parents and guardians via a website. You will be able to work through the steps in a self-serve process. You will be sent your child’s Aitken College login details and a link to the set-up website in a letter mailed to your home in early January, so please keep an eye out for that envelope.
We will also have a remote help desk staffed by our IT support team in mid to late January, which you can access via Zoom if you need assistance. Further details will be provided as soon as they are ready to share.
Ms Kerri Batch
College Head of Learning