Principal Team Report

Dear WHSC Community,

High School Musical

It is almost impossible to quantify the positive impact that our School Production has on so many students, their families and staff. In an Education Age where everything must be measurable, how do we communicate impact that defies a graph? For me, to see the joy on students faces, the absolute concentration as they transition to the next move and that look of absolute relief that they have achieved in a moment is something that will stay with them for a lifetime, makes all the hours of rehearsals worthwhile.

Nic Gramatakos, our new Production Director, who has learnt so much about the complexities of such an enterprise, the highs and lows, has done a fantastic job. We look forward to planning for School of Rock in 2026!  As part of the process, there has been significant investment in improving our lighting infrastructure which of course benefits all users of our theatre. A huge thanks to our families as well!

Student Attendance

One of the great benefits of the school production is that it is both a source of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for our students. 

The School recently met with Department staff who have been supporting us with a range of strategies as well as our own methodical and focused work to build student attendance. This has included:

• Employment of Attendance Officers for both Sub Schools

• Creation of the Learning and Wellbeing Centre

• Attendance Data Wall

•  Publishing of attendance data for the year levels to the community

• Working more closely with families

• Tightening up our internal processes relating to long term student absence and exits

• Working with students on early detection of non-attendance triggers for students

It is interesting to note that the downward trend in student attendance across the State was becoming apparent before COVID. While attendance improved after COVID there has been a decline in 2024. Also interesting to note is that inquiries and enrolments in Virtual School has increased by 200 percentage, along with registered  homeschooling which now sits at 15,000 in Victoria. Again, a huge increase. 

While there is a plethora of resources available to families once they engage with their particular school about attendance, there appears to be a lack of resources to citizens in general about the fundamental role school plays in educating our young people. Early in my career, I worked in a very disadvantaged school in the Outer East. There were a number of families, for a variety of reasons, who did not send their children to school until the senior years. While some of these students were academically strong, their lack of engagement and confidence amongst larger groups and their difficulties in navigating social connectedness often resulted in them not accepting tertiary offers or even engaging in employment. While the world has changed with the proliferation of online learning and virtual interface, nothing invented so far can replace the immediacy and profoundness of positive human interaction that school can offer and exemplified by the school production. There is no doubt that current schooling offers the most efficient way of delivering mass education. Whether it is sustainable in the long term without some reconfiguration of school days and how we educate our young people to become socially aware, proactive and empathetic young people, remains to be seen. At this moment in time, traditional schooling still offers the best opportunity for young people to connect and thrive. If anyone has ideas about what we can do to support young people stay in education, let’s share!

The GAT (general achievement test) was held on June 17 followed by our Unit 1 and Year 10 Exams. We would like to congratulate the exemplary behaviour of the students who participated in the GAT. The supervisors had nothing but praise for them. We would also like to acknowledge how impressed we as a College are with the way our senior students have gone about their learning this year in the Senior School Centre. When we take our primary school parents on College tours, they have commented on the way our Year Twelves in particular, interact with them on the positive learning vibe in the Senior School Centre. It was brought to our attention that some of the seating is past its best, so we have ordered 40 new padded chairs for the Study Centre. We are immensely grateful to families who support our Building Fund which in turn directly benefits our students’ learning environment. We would also like to acknowledge the work of our Senior School Team: Michael Lyristis, Sharon Sharpe, Anna Anetoudis, Jacinta Wilson as well as our Attendance Officer, Barbora Kosikova.

We know that we live in a world of exponential change. When I began teaching in 1989, we used a fordigraph, which was a spirit duplicator which produced purple copies that faded in the sunlight. You turned a lever that spilled out the copies that smudged if you were not careful! Reports were handwritten. Advances in all sorts of technologies have enriched our lives but also created huge dilemmas for us all in relation to social media and the privacy of our data. The Year Sevens are participating in eSafety activities which are so important. If you have a moment have a look at the attached clip:

Click here 

As the term reaches closure, I would like to thank our families, students and staff for making Wheelers Hill Secondary a special place.  We have amazing young people and even though we know that school has its challenges, educating young people is a genuine privilege. On behalf of the Principal Team, we wish everyone a safe and relaxing break. We will send out a Compass news feed late next week when reports are ready to download. We ask that you do as parents and carers, spend some time reading through the data with your children and check from the Term One Progress Report to see where gains have been made. Learning is not a straight line, and progress takes time, but effort and perseverance are never wasted

Take care.

Fern Brisbane

WHSC Principal

On behalf of the Principal Team