It's been a great term
Principal's report
You have the profile of a prince
With a physique that matches
Beneath the dirt and patches
You are a diamond in the rough
‘Diamond in the Rough’ by Alan Menken and Chad Beguelin from ‘Aladdin: The Musical’
Trial HSC exams
Trial HSC exams will be held in Week 2 and Week 3, Term 3. These are a vital opportunity for Year 12 students to demonstrate mastery of HSC content and skills. In terms of my introductory quote, it is fine for Year 12 students to be a “diamond in the rough” at this stage, with the trial HSC exams enabling Year 12 to work on polishing the diamond so that it sparkles in time for the final HSC exams in October/November. We are holding these trial HSC exams earlier than normal to give students time to incorporate feedback throughout Term 3 and demonstrate further improvement. It is very traditional but the best way to prepare is to complete past HSC exam papers, obtain teacher feedback and then use this feedback to improve the quality of exam responses.
NSW Secondary Deputy Principals' Association Presentations
Congratulations to Ms Slavica Galic, one of our senior English teachers, who was selected to present a session on QuickSmart Literacy at last week’s NSW Secondary Deputy Principal Association conference. The QuickSmart program aims to increase student automaticity and accuracy in recognising, understanding and using language to help improve learning across all subjects. It was also my pleasure to present a session at this conference on student wellbeing. Our school was highlighted last year as a model school for our success in this area. A copy of the case study conducted by the NSW Department of Education's Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation can be found here.
T4L Award for Innovation in Digital Administration and Management
Mr Andres Vargas, our wonderful Technical Support Officer, will be awarded the 2019 T4L Award for Innovation in Digital Administration and Management later in the year.
The T4L Awards are the premier awards issued by the NSW Department of Education for excellence in the area of technology for learning. Mr Vargas developed the ‘Connect App’ which helps all of our Connect teachers to track student data and learning content. Congratulations to Mr Vargas on attaining this prestigious award. You can find out more about our winning entry here.
School News email
There is a significant amount of debate in education circles about a range of topics. This includes Gonski, school funding, mobile phones in schools, NAPLAN and more! A great way to keep up to date with these discussions is to subscribe here to the ‘School News’ digital newsletter issued weekly.
Staff appointment
I am pleased to announce that Ms Bernadette Adams has been appointed as a permanent staff member. Ms Adams is an excellent teacher in the Social Sciences faculty, teaching senior classes including Business Studies and Society & Culture and recently accompanied our students on the overseas Japan excursion. Ms Adams is one of the leaders of our FOCUS team, which is implementing Positive Behaviour for Learning, and is helping with this important strategic direction of the school plan. I look forward to continuing to work with Ms Adams in her permanent role.
P&C Meetings
Our next P&C meeting will be held at 6:30pm on Monday, 5 August 2019. There will be a repeat session at 9:30am on Thursday, 8 August 2019.
I look forward to continuing to work with the staff, students and parents of Cecil Hills High School, the best school in NSW.
Mark Sutton, Principal