Principal’s Message

Welcome

Welcome to all families to the 2021 school year. I extend a special welcome to those families that are starting their CSC journey this year.

We also welcome the following new staff to the school for 2021:

Ben Nieuwkerk – Music Teacher and Co-ordinator
Sarah Lawler – Literacy Tutor
Karel Arndt –Numeracy Tutor
Alex Marney –Numeracy Tutor (Education Support Staff)
Mary Demosthenous – Literacy and Numeracy Tutor at Etty Street Campus
Paul Britton – Integration Aide
Oscar Carter-South – now our ongoing local ICT technician
Jennifer O’Donnell – Instrumental Music Teacher (Voice)

Year 12 success – 2020

At the end of 2020 we farewelled our Year 12 students. Due to the disruptions to their final year, these students had to wait a little longer than normal for their end of year results, which were released on December 30. Our Year 12 students recorded some very impressive achievements including the following highlights:

Alex Marney was the CSC Dux for 2020 with an ATAR of 98.35
Niamh O’Connor-Smith was our Dux Proximus with an ATAR of 97.45
7 students, including Alex and Niamh, achieved ATARs in the 90s
Another 7 students achieved ATARs in the 80s
The proportion of CSC students achieving ATARs above 80 continued to increase.
CSC maintained a high percentage of students achieving ATARs in the 70-79 range compared with most of our recent previous years.
Ten of our Year 12 VCAL students achieved Senior Certificates. This includes several students who overcame significant barriers to complete Year 12. Four students achieved Intermediate VCAL certificates and one student achieved a Foundation VCAL.

Congratulations to all of our Year 12 graduates for their achievements last year.

Many of our 2020 graduates have already secured university and TAFE placements (including some impressive scholarship offers), apprenticeships, employment and entry into other forms of training. However, our Careers Advisor, Mr Ian Cook, continues to be available to support our recent school leavers and to assist them with their post-secondary school pathways.

Tutoring Program

As you can see, five of our new staff have been employed under the government’s specially funded tutoring program to assist students to catch up on learning following the disruptions of 2020. Our new tutors will work mainly in classrooms and with small groups of students throughout the year to assist with learning catch-up and extension. Ms Judith McLean will be co-ordinating this program as a part of her Leading Teacher responsibilities.

Opening of New Buildings

It’s with great excitement that we start the school year in our new buildings and free of any major construction works. On February 10, Maree Edwards MP (State Minister for Bendigo West) officially opened these new facilities. We thank Ms Edwards for her attendance at this event and for her valuable support throughout the various stages of our school rebuild.

Student Awards - 2020

As many families will be aware, we were not permitted to hold our annual Awards Presentation Evening at the end of 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions. Our revised plan was to hold a special assembly in our school gym early this year so that we could invite parents, presenters and other special guests to issue our 2020 awards. Unfortunately though, we are still not permitted to hold indoor assemblies with large numbers of guests external to the school. To ensure that students are still recognized for their 2020 efforts, we have published the following document on our school website:

Congratulations to our 2020 award recipients. The awards themselves will be issued at several assemblies over the next few weeks. All being well, we hope we can return to the traditional way we have always honoured our award recipients at the end of this year (i.e. at our annual Awards Presentation Evening in the Town Hall).

13-17th Feb, Lockdown 2021

Thank you for your patience and flexibility as we’ve returned to remote learning over the past three days.

This morning Premier Andrews has announced that the Stage 4 lockdown will end at midnight and that all Victorian schools will return to face-to-face learning tomorrow. We look forward to seeing all CSC students back at school in the morning.

In the Premier’s announcement he explained that face masks will continue to be a requirement indoors as well as outdoors when physical distancing cannot be achieved. This is an important public health requirement which we must abide by as a school. I remind all students to ensure that they wear their face masks at school as required.

Again, we look forward to resuming classes onsite at CSC tomorrow.

Paul Frye

Principal

Castlemaine Secondary College News

Issue 1 · 17 Feb 2021

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