Principal's Report

COURSE COUNSELLING 2025

Term 3 began with a focus on 2025 courseselections. Our Parent Information Sessions were very well attended as was the level of engagement in the process from our students. We are currently creating various models for our 2025 senior school blocks to ensure the highest rate of student selections are achieved. 

On the back our junior school review, which was conducted at the beginning of the year, we have made changes to the structure of Year 8 for 2025, enabling students to select two elective subjects.

Due to significant price increases in school resources, our School Council has had to make the difficult decision to increase Curriculum and Extra-Curricular contributions by 10% in all elective subjects offered in 2025. This is to ensure the continued successful operation and high-quality resourcing of our diverse range of Educational Programs for all students, whilst keeping costs to a minimum. We understand that this is a difficult time for some families and encourage anyone experiencing financial hardship to reach out to the school for support options. 2025 handbooks will be updated on our website in the coming days.

ARABIAN NIGHTS

I would like to take this opportunity to recognise the cast, crew and staff who worked and rehearsed tirelessly from late last year and through Semester 1 to put on a fantastic cabaret production of Arabian Nights. The individual performances of all involved will ensure lasting memories have been created. Congratulations to all on an amazing show!

NAPLAN 2024 RESULTS

With the release of the national results for NAPLAN last week, I am pleased to report that our students have returned some excellent results. Our Year 7s have outperformed similar schools, our network and the state in all measures for the number of students returning 'Exceeding' or 'Strong' proficiency levels. For both Reading and Writing, 71% of students achieved these levels compared to 65% and 64% of students statewide respectively. For Numeracy, the result was 67% of students, compared to 62% of students statewide. Our Year 9 students have also done well, outperforming our network in all three of these measures, and the state and similar schools for Reading. In Writing and Numeracy, their results are on par with the state and similar schools. Most pleasingly, students that are equity funded by the state government, and therefore identified as needing some additional supports, have outperformed similar schools, the state and our network across Years 7 and 9 by a minimum of 13%. In some cases, such as for Year 7 Reading and Years 7 and 9 Numeracy, this figure is between 18-23%. This is a wonderful outcome for these students and speaks to our teachers' skills in supporting all students to achieve their personal best. I am proud of the way our students conducted themselves during NAPLAN 2024 and they should be proud of these results too. With high participation and effort going into the testing period, it is wonderful to see how Patterson River Secondary College students are embracing the challenge of NAPLAN as one important milestone in their schooling. 

Finally, we will be working with students on goal setting in Reading and Numeracy over the coming weeks to help them understand their results and to use them to think about what they can be working on next. Once they have done this, they will have permission to bring their printed results home. For now parents can access them in the 'Reports' tab on Compass. 

SCHOOL POLICIES

The College has a range of documented policies that guide our practice and can be accessed at any time via our College website. To ensure our policies are meeting the needs of our school community and are in line with direction from the Department of Education, policies are regularly reviewed and then approved through school council. This term, there are a number of policies that are due for renewal. We have begun the process of seeking feedback from our students and teachers and we would like to invite families to provide further feedback. Our policies are available via the College website and should you wish to provide feedback or suggest improvements please email, patterson.river.sc@education.vic.gov.au

Mr Adam Slater 

Acting College Principal