Principal's Report

February 2023

Relative smooth start to the new school year

The beginning of the school year has once again started productively even though we continued to receive challenges dealing with the teacher shortage.

As I mentioned in my letter to families last week, due to a national, state, and local shortage of teachers many schools have started the school year without their full complement of teachers. Kurunjang Secondary College has also been impacted by the challenge of this teacher shortage. We are not alone in this predicament as many of our neighbouring schools are all faced with the same staffing issues for the coming school year.

To assure a continuity of learning to our students and to give our students the best opportunity to begin the school year smoothly, the college has now made the difficult, but necessary, decision to increase the number of students in some classes. We have now made some adjustments to teaching schedules and to class lists, which did lead to some classes being collapsed and redistributed to others within their year level. As we work through this challenge, we have notified our students of these necessary changes and have started our new timetable earlier this week on Tuesday 21 February 2023.

This is far from the ideal experience we strive to provide for our students. Much like we endured during the height of the pandemic it is the reality we are faced with. We are making the best of what we can to ensure the best for our students continuity of learning. I look forward to future communications where I can share that we have filled these vacant positions with outstanding teachers to serve our students and hopefully be able to reinstate the changes to the classes that will be impacted by this difficult, but necessary, decision.

In terms of our start, our students should be applauded as they have come prepared to school, (with their books, equipment, and uniforms), all ready to learn. Importantly they have been displaying a positive attitude towards their learning. At our team assemblies we continue to stress the need for students to work with their teachers to achieve their best. Our school motto of ”Learn, Grow, Achieve Together” was emphasized as were our values of respect, achievement and responsibility.

The whole school vertical team structure has enabled us to start well, and it has been at the core of the smooth start to our year with coordinators and teachers doing an excellent job transitioning students very quickly to classes.

John Mitsinikos

College Principal