PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to our first newsletter for 2024.  I hope you all had an enjoyable summer break with your families and friends.

It’s been a great start to the school year with a palpable air of positivity around the college!

New Students and Families.

I’d like to take this opportunity to say a very special welcome to our new families. This year we have well over 150 Year 7 students commencing with us at Surf Coast - our biggest Year 7 group for some time. Last week I had the pleasure of manning the BBQ at our Year 7 family night. It was a great opportunity for parents and carers to meet with their young person’s core teachers in a relaxed and informal atmosphere. Thank you to all those who attended.

This year we are also seeing growth in the number of students joining us in Years 8-12. Many of these students are transitioning across from private schools, some are new families who have moved into the Surf Coast region and a few are students who are re-joining us after a time in other settings. 

There are certainly a lot of new faces in our school community and we look forward to working with you all over the coming years.

Our First Assembly for 2024.

Last week I addressed our Year 7-11 students in our first whole school assembly. The theme of the assembly was ‘Starting the Year Right’. Key topics discussed were:

• Welcoming our new students and teachers
• Updating on our new classrooms in Years 7-9
• The importance of daily school attendance
• Arriving at school on time and remaining on campus
• The purpose of our new ‘Learning Advocate Time’ (LAT) each morning
• Uniform expectations
• Our new ‘Student Management and Community Response’ guidelines
• Opening Compass Chronicle entries to parents
• Our new school vision statement
• Our new school motto - ‘Embrace Challenge, Achieve Excellence’
• Our school values - Strive, Unite, Respect, Flourish (SURF)

I believe very strongly in setting clear expectations of students from the start of the school year. The work of our staff now is to support all our young people to meet these expectations, embrace challenge and achieve excellence! 

2024 Camps Program.

The college leadership team have been working on our new-look camps program for 2024. We are now well into the post-COVID era and we want to be able to offer our students a full range of camp experiences in local, interstate and international destinations.

The following outlines the camp opportunities available to Surf Coast students:

• Year 7 - Grampians Camp (whole year level)
• Year 8 - Melbourne Camp (whole year level)
• Year 9 - Alpine School (leadership camp)
• Year 9 - Outdoor Education Grampians Hike
• Year 10 - Outdoor Education Wilsons Prom Hike
• Year 9 & 10 - Central Australia Trip
• Year 9 & 10 - World Challenge Borneo Expedition (2025)
• Year 9-11 - Snow Camp
• Year 9-11 - Indonesia Trip
• Year 9-11 - Sport, Surf and Action Sports Academies Queensland Camps
• Year 8-11 - Great Victorian Bike Ride
• Year 12 - VET Sport and Recreation Snow Camp

We are very proud to be able to offer so many exciting camp and travel opportunities for our students. It makes for a very busy school calendar and requires commitment from our school staff to make these experiences a possibility.

I encourage all students to embrace the challenge and get involved in these exciting adventures!

Positive Start to the Year.

I’m very please to share that all teachers and support staff have reported that they feel our students have been exceptional in the first two weeks of school with an overwhelming sense of positivity about the new school year. 

Classrooms are calm and productive with students engaging in meaningful work right from day one. The vast majority of our young people are engaging very well with their teachers, peers, learning tasks and extra-curricular opportunities. Our students are being punctual to class and their uniform is looking better than ever! 

For this, I’d like to offer my sincere thanks and appreciation to all students, parents and carers for your support. Our school community really is laying the foundation for this to be an exceptional year at Surf Coast Secondary College! By working together we can create the high performing school our community wants and deserves. 

Take care,

Shane Elevato

Acting Principal