Assistant Principal  -Curriculum

Dear parents/caregivers, staff, students and friends,

My newsletter article today covers a variety of topics, some of which I know are covered in other parts of this newsletter.

Year 12 Moderated School Assessment Marks: Work hard!  

To start with, I’d like to focus on our Year 12 students.  The school assessment marks and ranks are currently being calculated before we send these to NESA in Week 9 this term.  Each student's HSC mark is taken 50% from the school assessment and 50% from each student’s HSC Exam mark.  I have been explaining an important point to Year 12 this week.  The raw school assessment marks are moderated by NESA.  To do this, they look at the HSC exam marks for each cohort in each course in each school.  The short way to explain this is that the highest school assessment mark is changed to match the highest HSC exam mark.  Also, the lowest school assessment mark is changed to the lowest exam mark.  The average of the school assessment marks is made the same as the average of the HSC exam marks.  The ranks and gaps are preserved in the moderated exam marks.

Here's a video from NESA explaining this.

HSC Assessment Moderation Explained (extended)

The main message for all Year 12 students in this:  The school assessment marks have been calculated, but what they end up being depends on the performance of the class in the HSC Exam.  Everyone needs to work hard now, in the short number of weeks left, to get the highest HSC mark in a few months when the results come out.  It’s not too late to improve.

NSW Catholic Schools Secondary Curriculum Reform Conference 2023

Last Thursday and Friday, our Leader of Pedagogy, Ms Lauren Donnelly, and I spent two days in Sydney at the Secondary Curriculum Reform Conference.

In case you don’t know, we will have new syllabuses starting in English, Maths and French next year (2024) in Years 7 and 9.  This is the beginning of every course (from Kindergarten to Year 12) being reviewed and new syllabuses coming in before the end of 2028.  In fact, the new curriculum began this year in primary schools with new English and Maths syllabuses being taught for Years K to 2 in 2023.

This curriculum reform is an exciting change for all of us.  The theme for the conference was “We get to…” as we see this as a great opportunity to improve the teaching and learning that happens in our classrooms.  “We get to…” is so much more positive than “We have to…” and that positive growth mindset is the attitude Lauren and I came back with.  In short, the syllabuses have been streamlined to reduce cluttered content, skills and content will be taught together in each subject area and the learning continuum will become clearer so students can more smoothly be taught where they are at, not just everyone doing the same work.  These are exciting times!!

Our first assembly in the new building!

We had our first assembly in the new creative arts building this week.  On Monday morning, we had a regular assembly with Year 9, 10, 11 and 12 sitting on the new tiered seats (with a few extras set up).  Year 7 and 8 sat on the carpet up the front.  You can see how it looked with these photos.

I said to the assembly how happy I was to stand before our school community and look out at us sitting in this amazing new space.  It’s a lot more suitable than the quad (with concrete floor) or the chapel.  We look forward to having more assemblies in this space, with a special formal assembly for our Year 12 Graduation on the last day of this term.  I can’t wait!

Student Leaders Gathering

On Tuesday evening this week, I was privileged to accompany our Captains and Vice Captains to PLC to mix with the student leaders from PLC, TAS, NEGS, ASC and Calrossy.  It was impressive to see all these leaders mixing together as if they are old friends, which evidently they are!  They talked about leadership and had some fun at the same time. 

Student Leaders from TAS, Calrossy (Tam), NEGS, PLC, ASC and O’Connor

Year 11 Exams: Week 9

The Year 11 Examinations will be happening in Week 9.  Just 1 week away now!  These are the third and final assessment task for most courses.

Year 11 Examination Timetable (Week 9 Term 3)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YFYPsa95SiVN2ct4DGe3_kV72dUPdyGcZk8qN8KUCU4/edit?usp=sharing

There are no classes during the exams.  Students who have only one exam can just come to school for their exam.  If there are two exams on the same day, these students must stay at school for the hour or so between exams.

Staff Professional Learning

I could write a whole article on staff professional learning every issue.  I thought I’d tell you a bit about our meeting this week on Wednesday afternoon.  Here are some photos of our teachers collaborating and discussing our students.

The meeting was facilitated by Mrs Karleigh Eastlake, our Leader of Learning - Inclusion.  We worked with other teachers from our KLA to adjust a task for a student in each of our classes.  It was great to see our teams discussing differentiation meaningfully so our students can access the learning tasks in their classes.

Conclusion

I admit, I have written about a few things that relate to our staff in this issue.  I strongly feel that everyone, students and parents/carers included, needs to be aware of the exciting things that happen at our school.  We are all in this together.  In closing, I’d like to thank our Acting Principal, Mr Robert Holstein, for coming in for the last one-and-a-half terms of this year while our new principal is appointed.  Mr Holstein retired as the Principal from St Joseph’s Aberdeen at the end of last year and has put his retirement plans on hold for this time with us.  He has made a great start, being out and about meeting students and staff.  His ideas and extensive experience have already helped us.  Thank you, Robert.

Mr Stephen Chapman

Assistant Principal - Curriculum

Never stop learning; for when we stop learning, we stop growing  - Jack Lewman