Principal's Report

Term 3 ending quickly

As Term 3 starts to draw to a conclusion we continue to have many significant events occurring.

Last night we held our Year 7 to 11 Parent Teacher interviews.  It was very pleasing to see such a good turnout of parents.  Many teachers informed me that they had interviews for almost the entire three hours.  The feedback from parents also indicated that the use of the online booking platform was very successful.  We will continue to refine this process to make the experience even more user friendly. I’ll also take this opportunity to encourage you to down load our School App onto your devices.  This will give you up to date information about our school.  Simply go to your App store and search Cowra High.  It is a free App.

This week we announced our 2018 School Captains and Vice Captains; India Johnson, Andrew Barker, Janae Hinderager and Billy Eldridge.  I know these fine young people will be highly effective student leaders and a credit to our school. Congratulations!

At Wednesday's assembly we were pleased to be able to congratulate the recipients of the 2016 Scholarships.  These scholarships are to aid our students complete Year 12 and tertiary education.  We gratefully acknowledge the support of the following sponsors:

Cowra Services Club Ltd, the Fagan family, the Henley Family, Mrs Enid Langfield, the Hackett-Jones family  and the Cowra Bowling & Recreation Club.

Recipients of these wonderful scholarships were:

Cowra Services Club Ltd:                        Tobie Gilmore

Patricia Fagan Scholarship:                   Maddison Johnson

                                                                           Meggan Ellison

Frank Hackett-Jones Scholarship:     Toby Baker

The Henley Scholarship:                         Milly Boland

Enid J Langfield Scholarship:               Alana Ryan

Cowra Bowling & Recreation Club:    Bobbie-Lee Barker

                                                                           Andrew Barker

Congratulations to our worthy recipients.

Next week Year 11 will commence their end of course exams.  I wish them all the best of luck and encourage them to build on that luck will a lot of hard work and study.

We had the pleasure of viewing our Year 12 Industrial Technology Timber major works last week after HSC marking.  The variety and quality was outstanding.  Look out for photos in our next newsletter.

Earlier this week at the September P&C meeting, some questions were asked about this year’s NAPLAN results, so I thought I would share some whole school statistics.  I believe the true value in NAPLAN is found by looking at the results of individuals as part of the student’s whole picture.  It takes into account their academic growth, their personal circumstance, strengths in all aspects of schooling and the personal knowledge of how they approached the test on the particular day compared with how they are performing in these areas everyday in school.  Yet looking at the aggregate statistics can give us some general directions to examine in further detail.  The following statistics are based on a comparison of our school with similar schools in terms of student demographics from across the state.

School average results compared to like schools:

                                        Reading    Writing    Spelling    Grammar    Numeracy

Cowra High                   +10.4            -4.0           +8.0             +6.2              +15.4

Year 7

Cowra High                   +8.8              +0.5           +5.8             +22.8            -0.6

Year 9

This shows that our focus in developing reading and numeracy is starting to pay in results, particularly in Year 7.   It has also highlighted we need to increase our efforts in Year 9 and in writing.  Our growth from Year 5 to 7 and Year 7 to 9 was also very pleasing.  We saw some outstanding growth for most students taking part in our CHIPS program.

Have a great fortnight.

Charles Gauci

PBL Winners

Congratulations to our wonderful students who were rewarded for their respectful and responsible behaviour at our PBL Draw this morning.

Back: Emily Louttit, Brady Barlow, Dominic Porter, Courtney Wright, Jessica Henderson, Ashleigh Francis.

Front: Madison O'Brien, Alex Shaw, Tyrone Gee, Keanin Judd, Bindi-Lea Newton, Tess Roberts.

We would like to thank our PBL sponsors, Mr Embroidery Cowra, Bushmans Boots and All Cowra, Subway Cowra, Domino’s Pizza Cowra, 131Pizza Cowra, Sportspower Cowra, McDonalds Cowra and The Cowra Services Club.

Your ongoing support is fantastic and the kids really appreciate it.