Principal's Report

Graduation

Year 12 Graduation took place on Monday night, and while initial plans were to hold it in a picnic style, the weather put a stop to that diving back into wintery conditions. We are extremely grateful to the Bell family for coming to the rescue, by offering their venue for us to use. The evening was a lovely chance for the students, their families and staff to get together to celebrate the achievements of this group of young people. Navigating the senior years of schooling is no easy feat normally, and the disruption of the last 2 years made a difficult time even more difficult.

Advantage Program

The Advantage Program started with a bang this week, with guest speakers from Elevate Education talking about study tips, time management and other useful study skills. Students also got a better understanding of the requirements of the VCE program. The students found these sessions useful and helped put things into perspective, such as you don’t have to study for hours on end, you just need to make sure that the study you do is effective.

COVID

With COVID cases being detected in town, it is worth remembering what the current guidelines are.

• It is recommended that if you have symptoms, you should test for COVID. RATs are available from the office for you or your child to collect.
• The Department of Health recommends positive cases to be reported to employers, schools and households. Positive results can be reported to the Department of Health online, or by calling 1800 675 398, or you can report a positive result to school.
• Positive cases are recommended to isolate for a minimum of 5 days and not attend school until symptoms have resolved.
• The Department of Health recommends that face masks should be worn by a person who is a close contact of a positive case when leaving home.
• The Department of Health also recommend that a person with COVID should wear a mask for at least 7 days after a positive test when they need to leave home.

Recruitment

This time of year is always busy with recruiting for the following year. We have had a number of positions advertised and I am pleased to say that for the majority of them, we have had applicants. We are up to interviewing for most of the positions and hopefully will have people in place for all positions before the end of the year. Questions often crop up at this time of the year about which teacher will be taking which classes. While current staff are aware of what they have been allocated to teach next year, things may, and often do change from the initial planning to when the next year starts; so while teachers can say they may be taking a particular class, there is always a bit of hesitation in case changes are made.

Staff

Changes to staff availability are still being made known for next year, meaning there will be some more positions advertised in the near future. Marg Jowitt is taking a year of leave as she is planning to try a different style of teaching at the Virtual School Victoria. We all wish her well for 2023 and look forward to hearing about new teaching strategies that we can incorporate tour classes. Heather Tottenham has decided not to return to our school and will be returning to Mount Beauty Primary School in 2023. Heather has been a great addition to our team and worked tirelessly in the library this year to update resources and the library space. She has implemented some new initiatives and also revamped and relaunched our newsletter, as part of her role in communications. I’d like to thank Heather for all of her work this year and wish her all the best in her return to MBPS.