Principal's Message

Dear Parents/Carers,   

I wish to welcome back all staff, students and families for the 2023 school year. We have a number of new staff who have joined our college in 2023, as well as new Year 7 students and new students across Years 8 to 12.  

I extend a warm welcome to all new members of the LSC community.

Start Up for 2023

As we commence the year, our focus has been on establishing high expectations and pre-conditions for learning.  This has included some adjustments to our school day, as well as implementation of a range of updated policies and processes.  These include, but are not limited to:

• Commencement of daily home group, as well as weekly mentoring sessions for students across Years 7 to 12
• Introduction of new uniform items for students, including beanies, hats and jumpers
• Continued implementation of pre-conditions processes surrounding equipment to class, mobile phones and headphones, laptops and uniform, including aligning consequences for breaches to support this
• Revised yard duty spaces, including morning gate duties to welcome students on site, as well as support implementation of our high expectations regarding our pre-conditions

As part of the preparation for the year, we utilised two student-free days to run important professional learning for all staff.  This included sessions run both by members of the LSC Leadership Team, as well as external experts including Glen Pearsall who is known both in Australia and also internationally for his work in formative assessment and effective behaviour management.

Our students were also welcomed back with year-level specific programs on their first day of school, including our Year 7s undertaking a specialised welcome program, and our Year 12s having a program focused not just on academic studies, but also sessions to support their physical and mental health and wellbeing.

2023 Annual Implementation Plan

For 2023, our priorities will focus on actions under Learning and Wellbeing.  These are articulated below for all members of the community to be aware of as they will feature heavily in our work and communications as a school over the course of the year.

Learning: 

Action 1: Develop, implement and document a guaranteed and viable curriculum that provides students with voice, agency and opportunities to connect learning to life.

Action 2: Build staff capacity to design and implement high-quality assessment practices.

Wellbeing: 

Action 1: Support improved student engagement and wellbeing through the effective implementation of home group and mentoring structures and resourcing.

Action 2: Implement and embed effective policies and processes to enable all students to be ready for learning (attendance, pre-conditions, behaviour).

Holiday works and upgrades

Whilst our students and staff were on holidays, I am pleased to say that we were able to complete the following minor works to improve our physical spaces around the college:

• Preparation of two classroom spaces to come online in 2023 (D3 and A6)
• Painting, recarpeting and furniture replacement in D Block space (D9 to D15)
• Creation of new office spaces for Junior Sub School and Middle Sub School
• Refreshing of student locker bays with cleaning/painting

Due to delays in logistics and manufacturing, we are still awaiting our brand new lockers for our Year 7 students which will be based in E Block.  These are expected to be at the college and installed in the next couple of weeks. Our Year 7s have been set up in a temporary space in the meantime and will be relocated as soon as these are ready.

I thank our Business Manager, Mr Craig Kendall, for the immense amount of organisation these improvements involved, as well as many visits to the site and phone calls over the holidays to ensure these works were completed before students returned on site.

Upcoming events and important dates

Term 1 is an incredibly busy term, and we have lots of community events occurring.  In addition to this, we will be hosting our annual Swimming Carnival on Monday 20th February which kicks off our first whole school House-based event for 2023. I look forward to celebrating student success on this day (even for students not in my house which is Hale).

Further to this, our college concluded our Strategic Plan at the end of 2022.  This means that our college will be engaging with a review process in Term 1, 2023 which will assist us in celebrating our successes, as well as identifying further areas for strategic improvement over the next four years.  Students, staff and families will be engaged with this important process and I thank those involved in advance for their work with this.

Finally, please find a summary of key dates for your Term 1 calendars:

Ms Eloise Haynes

Principal