Executive Principal 

TRANSCRIPTION:

Hello and welcome to this fortnight's edition of our school newsletter. 

Well, as usual, The Gap State High School is a very busy place. This week, I have a few things that I need to share with you.

First up, I want to um inform and remind everyone that in week 10 of this term, we are trying something a little bit different on the last Friday of the term. I've pitched this to the P&C and they're 100% supportive of the plan. What we're going to be doing is allowing our year sevens, eights, and nines to engage in a full day of enhancement opportunities to build their sense of belonging and connect with their peers in our school on that day. So, they will have exposure to amazing guest speakers doing house and year level related activities where they will get to have fun and enjoy their last day before they head into the holidays. For our senior students, they're going to have the opportunity to take that day to self-regulate and to lean into the way we gradually release responsibility for them to have opportunities to have autonomy to plan and regulate their study opportunities. So, we know they're going to be really busy with assessment and assignments and exams. And so it's an opportunity for them to have a day to take for themselves to do these things. If that's a concern for any of our families, please know that our school library is open for our young people in year 10, 11, and 12. If they want to come and do independent study in the library or small group study with their peers, they are more than welcome to spend the day in the school library and access those resources.

In other great news is all of our instrumental students in their various ensembles did an amazing job at the recent fanfare event that was hosted at The Gap State High School. I'm incredibly proud of the students individually and collectively who have the courage to keep persevering and learning their instruments and honing their skills. those young people together with their incredibly talented instrumental music teachers and music teachers at the Gap State High School bring it all together to make beautiful music that I'm incredibly proud to be part of and get the opportunity to listen to. 

I look forward to seeing who gets to go to our state competition with those brilliant results. Finally, I would like to talk to you about alumni opportunities and what we've been doing with our really strong focus on jewellery. 

So, it's been amazing to already hear from past Gap State High School students, of which there are many in our 65-year history, who are leaning in and connecting up and wanting to reconnect with past peers from their school days. and we're really looking forward to building a great database where we can connect in more fully with many of our alumni. The privilege for me of being here for 9 years is I know a lot of the fairly recent alumni, but I also know there's really strong connections with past students who have attended the Gap State High School. 

I'm incredibly grateful to our families, our parents, and our carers who have taken the time to follow through with their young people around jewellery. This term, we have been looking at doing a blitz around ensuring our students are really clear about what's required in accordance with our student uniform policy, and we've made huge inroads and we're really happy that the amount of jewellery and the amount handed in and collected has dramatically reduced across the school.

So on behalf of myself and the leaders in the school who've been really working hard in that space, I thank you for your ongoing and continued support to help us keep our students on their toes around what the expectations are because when we do that, we know they have a clearer path to stay connected to their teaching and learning.

Until next time, thank you very much.