May 2019

"Learn….Grow….Achieve Together”

As you walk around the College, as you enter our classrooms, and as you open our student planners or visit our website, you will see our motto: “Learn, Grow, Achieve Together”.

I ask our school community when they see our motto to stop and think about these 3 things carefully.

I also wonder at times whether we all really understand what our motto means.

What does it mean to Learn, to Grow, to Achieve Together?

Why is it important to Learn, to Grow and to Achieve together?

The “what” and the “why” is best answered by the realization that we all live in the 21st century and that we are citizens of the 21st Century. In this world we are all asked to continually evaluate new knowledge, to work creatively with others, to appreciate diversity and to think flexibly in a global environment. Many of us will spend our lives living and working outside of the confines of the areas that our parents lived and worked. I know that most of students will be end up living outside of Melton. That is the reality.

In the 21st Century, we all need to be team players, striving for both continual improvement in ourselves and in our work. If we together do not learn these skills, as individuals we will struggle to deal with the demands of our lives. That is the reality.

Hence, our motto of “Learn, Grow, Achieve together”.

Here at Kurunjang we value respect, achievement and responsibility. We all want our students and our community, individually and collectively to develop a love of learning within a supportive and challenging academic environment that is constantly striving to allow students to do their best.

In this spirit, I wish all of our students every success as the first semester draws to an end with their examinations and learning tasks that many of them will complete in the next few weeks.

NAPLAN

Our Year 7 & 9 students just completed their NAPLAN tests in both Literacy and Numeracy. For the first time here at Kurunjang Secondary College our students sat the NAPLAN tests online this year. Federal, state and territory Education Ministers have agreed that NAPLAN will move online over the next two/three years for all schools, but we decided to start as of this year. NAPLAN Online uses an adaptive test design, which presents questions that better match student achievement levels and provide more precise results for teachers and schools. We look forward to seeing the outcome of these tests.

In preparation, our teachers made appropriate curriculum changes to better assist our students. The English Learning Team, has worked on ensuring that the skills required have been explicitly taught in their curriculum. In Mathematics, appropriate changes were made and specific time was allocated as part of lessons to Years 7 to 9 to give students the experience of completing their tests online.

I look forward to seeing the results of our teachers’ and students’ hard work in a more timely manner now that the testing is online.

Youth forum to inform the development of Victorian Government’s vision for post-school education.

A changing world calls for new skills and new thinking. The world of work is shifting and evolving, and we need an education and training system after secondary school which prepares young Victorians for the vast array of opportunities and challenges that this will provide.

The Minister for both Training and Skills and Higher Education, Ms Gayle Tierney, recently invited two of our senior school students, Shane Addicoat of Year 11 and Moya Inyasio of Year 12 to a Youth Forum on the morning of Monday 13 May 2019, in the Faculty of Business and Economics Dean’s Boardroom at The University of Melbourne. They joined a small forum of approximately 15 future, current and recent students of the post-secondary system from across the state in a new conversation, which seeked to define the characteristics of a post-school system that can respond and adapt to future skills demands and learner and industry needs – whatever and wherever they may be.

We are all aware that we need a system that is easy to understand, access and move through so that all Victorians – young and old, entering the workforce or reskilling – are able to access the high-quality training and education they need, when and where they need it. Through discussion with the young people who will be the ultimate beneficiaries, as well as key stakeholders from across the system, the Victorian Government is developing a vision for what post-school education in Victoria could look like for learners now and into the future.

I also look forward to the outcome of these conversations.

-John Mitsinikos

College Principal

Deakin University

Year 11 Study Skills