Principal's Message

Term One - exciting things have been happening

What a busy start to the year we have had and as the term draws to a close, we are all looking forward to some well earned holidays! As always, I like to reflect on all of the exciting things that have happened over the past term:

Firstly, we welcomed over 170 new year 7 students and two new classes to our Kuta Kaya Faculty. We also welcomed a host of new staff into the school who were incredibly excited and passionate to get to know our students! We also welcome Ms Bailey to the incredible team of Year Advisors. Ms Bailey is busy organising Year 7 Camp for our new students. 

This term, we have introduced our Extracurricular sessions which occur every Thursday week B, period 4. Following some voting and selecting, we have some really exciting groups running including everything from Dungeons and Dragons, school beautification with our Door Painting team, students learning new skills with needlecraft and baking groups, board games and students who travel every week to work in our partner primary schools supporting younger students! Our S.P.O.R.T. Squad has also taken advantage of this additional periods to run targeted coaching sessions for our various teams. Ms Gavenlock and the coaches have planned some exciting sessions and guest coaches for our athletes, so stay tuned for some more amazing results from our S.P.O.R.T. students! 

Our Clontarf Academy has also taken advantage of Extra Curricular sessions to run some great sessions for our students. The Academy continues to grow under Clark’s leadership and we are pleased to welcome two staff to Clontarf,  Noah and Joel. The Academy is also undergoing some upgrades with a bathroom, laundry and a new kitchen coming soon (hopefully!).  This initiative supports close to 100 A&TSI boys, and we love that for the twice weekly training at a 7am start time, we have over 30 boys regularly attending. The initiative also supports our Stage 6 students and I would like to acknowledge Osca Bonar who has successful gained a SBAT through this amazing program! Well done Osca! 

Our new CAPA space in the renovated Hall is being put to great use with our CAPA and hospitality teams hosting the Nostalgia Festival High Tea event this week. Our students catered, performed and even modelled some nostalgia style fashions for our guests. Well done to all involved. 

Our Jr AECG also launched the amazing legacy polo shirt which was a huge success…. And we have a few sizes left over so if your student is interested then they can purchase from the front office for just $35! 

Our Wellbeing Centre continues to go from strength to strength with Ms Weir, Ms Da Silva, Megan and the team working to create a positive space for our students but also our outside service providers. So far this term we have welcomed our local Police Liaison Officer Constable Upwood delivering the Smart Choices sessions to all students in year 7, Year 10 have been involved in the LoveBites program learning about domestic violence, Project Rockit have spoken to many year groups about online safety and cyber bullying, the amazing team from My Strengths have worked with our Year 7 and 10 students to support the introduction of positive psychology and strength based approach to education and the Tomorrow Man and Tomorrow Woman teams have worked with our students in years 10-12. The amazing Megan has many more programs planned so keep an eye out on your emails and our social media channels.

In Term 2, we will be introducing our new behavioural expectations and programs which includes a new positive reward program to celebrate all of the STARs in our school. We are enjoying planning the year ahead and I am excited to share it all with our students, parents, carers and community as we progress through the year! 

Welcome back to 2023 and get ready for all of the exciting things coming for the remainder of this year!