From the Principal 

Welcome to our last Newsletter for the term, featuring some great reports of student achievement across the full breadth of the curriculum.

This week, many of our students will be involved in our Mid-Year Music Celebrations, the concerts will have no capacity restrictions this year and I hope that you are able to attend to make it a great celebration. Our students were busy rehearsing last week on Camp and we look forward to hearing them play together as a culmination of the work that they have put in over the past Semester.

The Course Expo was a fabulous opportunity for families to come and meet our staff and see the excellent curriculum that our students have access to. I hope that you were one of the hundreds of families that were able to attend. Our staff were so keen to share their subject area insights and enthusiasm with students and families. Our Northcote Model takes a little bit of time to understand comprehensively and I appreciate the sub-school teams being available to explain the options for our students. Our Connect classes will be used to assist students making selections that fit with their future aspirations. Please make sure that you access the updated resources on our school website and reach out for assistance through the Connect tutors if you, or your child, have any questions.

We have had many schools interested in finding out more about the Northcote Model and how they can implement a similar version of it in their school. We are pleased that we can demonstrate choice and agency in student programs, as well as deliver an engaging middle years curriculum experience.

Our reports will be published mid-next week. A reminder that we have an Assessment and Reporting day scheduled this Friday to enable staff to complete the assessments by; providing feedback to  students in Teams on the Common Assessment Tasks (CATs), completing the Learning Tasks feedback in Compass and entering the summative information into the Reports. Our Year 11 teachers are also preparing feedback for students feedback from the Year 11 Semester Exams. I hope that our students have learnt a lot from the experience about revision and preparation to assist them in feeling confident for future assessments.

The work for our Masterplan continues. Kerstin Thompson Architects have continued to work on the plans for our new building and have been consulting with our staff and parent representatives. The designs incorporate a complete student services area that has the Library, IT technicians, Careers and Wellbeing teams all located together. The STEM facility will provide the school with 4 additional laboratory spaces as well as collaborative spaces for our students to learn together in classes as well as provide spaces for our extra-curricular clubs and teams to meet.

We are expecting new portables to be delivered onsite soon, to accommodate students while the works are being undertaken. These are going to be located in the D-block area and will provide more modern General Purpose Classrooms (GPCs) for our students to learn in.

I hope that you have something planned for your holiday break, take the time to re-energise and we look forward to seeing you in Term 3.

Chris Jones