Principal's Report

Student success at the Premier’s VCE Awards

Congratulations to Jake Farrugia who was recently presented with a Premier’s VCE Award for his outstanding academic results in 2017.

Jake received a Study Award for excellence in the VCE subject VET Digital Media 2017 which is a fantastic result in itself. What makes this achievement even more remarkable and noteworthy is that Jake was studying the Unit 3-4 sequence while he was in Year 11. Well done Jake!

The annual Premier’s VCE Awards recognise the top-performing students in the state, with 274 students presented this year with awards for their outstanding results.

The entire Catholic Regional College Federation family and Parish community will no doubt be proud of Jake just like Catholic Regional College Sydenham is.  On behalf of all, I take this opportunity to congratulate Jake on being the recipient of such a prestigious award.

Jake has made a fantastic start to his final year results demonstrating the value of taking up a Year 11 subject while in Year 10 paving the way for students to complete a study while in Year 12. For 2019 we will be introducing a new program that permits Year 11 students to pick up two Unit 3-4 studies while in Year 11 based on high stanine testing scores from the Year 10 academic testing data. We will be writing to families of these students individually inviting them to consider this option.

While student excellence in and across a student’s chosen studies is always celebrated, at Catholic Regional College Sydenham we also celebrate personal achievement and those students who commit to their studies to improve. We often hear about athletes ‘personal best’. As a College community we also celebrate students’ personal best results through the Academic Endeavour Awards program. In Term 2 and 4, at the start of the term, staff nominate students who have worked hard to improve their results and knowledge in specific areas of study. Every subject is recognised across the VCE and VCAL including all VET courses we offer. The awards are presented in front of the entire College at an assembly. The recent awards assembly was a celebration of the hard work, dedication and commitment shown by each and every one of the students presented with an Endeavour Award. Our special guest invited to present the awards to students was Federal Member for Calwell Maria Vamvakinou.

I applaud the efforts of these students and encourage all students to apply themselves to achieve their best, it is all we ever ask of any student really.

Congratulations to the following students who received Endeavour Awards for the subjects listed:

Our community values academic application, endeavour, achievement and personal best but we also value the contributions made by members of our community outside of the classroom and formal study. Our Cluster or House based system is a strength of the College and we always look for opportunities to recognise the way in which students are contributing to the community in a variety of ways outside of the classroom. Cluster Coordinators award these awards with the Home Group Tutor in recognition of the extra curricular efforts by students. The following award recipients are congratulated for receiving a Cluster Award at the recent assembly:

Some families will have noticed that the assembly was live broadcast on our Facebook page. This year we established SydTV, our live broadcast station for the internet. The program is one of our many VCAL electives offered at the College. The SydTV elective provides students with the chance to be involved in the production, filming and broadcast of a live online TV broadcast. Students are working on advertisements for the College businesses at present that will appear with future live broadcasts. It is planned that we will broadcast all future Masses and Assemblies so that families who may not be able to join us for these community celebrations can log on and watch from wherever they are at the time or view the footage at a later time. We review each broadcast and learn from each one in order to improve for the next time we go live. Thank you to all families who provided positive feedback and encouragement during the recent assembly broadcast, we are very pleased this was so warmly received and hope to be able to provide even better footage for future occasions.