And just like that, the 2026 school year is well underway for our senior school students.

It was wonderful to welcome our students back to the Senior Centre on 28 January, excited to begin their VCE or VCE Vocational Major journeys. With the buzz of finally reaching the top end of the school comes the added responsibility of balancing study, work, social life and decisions about the future.

Our 2025 Dux, Hana Joy Ly, who achieved a perfect ATAR of 99.95, shared some valuable advice at our first whole-school assembly. Hana spoke about the important role balance played in her VCE success, highlighting the benefits of consistent effort over last-minute, all-night cramming sessions. She encouraged students to balance their study and social lives, celebrate milestones with friends and family, and keep strong support networks around them during busy periods. Hana Joy is about to commence her Engineering Honours (Accelerated Pathway) at Monash University and will also be returning to Parkdale Secondary College as one of our Alumni Tutors, supporting the Classes of 2026 and 2027. We are confident our VCE students will benefit from her support, particularly in Maths and Science.

It was pleasing to welcome so many parents, carers and students to our VCE and VCE VM information nights. We trust you found the information helpful and encourage you to reach out to our senior team at any stage.

With Senior Boys Cricket success, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory musical auditions and rehearsals underway, final school photos taken (with everyone’s hair looking fantastic!), it has been a busy and exciting start to the year.

Year 12

Badges were presented to our Student Leaders and Year 12 students, who are proudly wearing them on their new Year 12 jumpers. The cohort is coming together in a positive and supportive way, decorating the Senior Centre with Valentine’s Day hearts, dressing in House colours and showcasing wonderfully creative costumes at the Swimming Carnival.

The students went to great efforts to make their final Swimming carnival one to remember.

Year 12 students have several key events coming up, including Formal on 13 March and the Year 12 Camp in the first week of Term 2. Please ensure payments are made on time to secure your child’s place, as external venues have firm deadlines and are often unable to accommodate late requests.

Our Year 12 students also recently attended a presentation by Helen Billett, English Chief Assessor, who provided expert guidance to support students with their assessments and upcoming SACs. Helen clarified the difference between demonstrating knowledge and demonstrating skills, helping students move beyond simply knowing content to actively applying it in their writing. She also reinforced the importance of purpose, audience, author and context in shaping strong analytical responses, and shared practical strategies for planning essays.

The focus for year 12 students is establishing effective habits and routines around their study, ones they can consistently maintain to the end of the year. Consistent effort will always outperform short bursts.

Year 11

Our Year 11 students have settled well and are working towards their first round of SACs. It is pleasing to see an increasing number of students utilising the senior centre study areas to complete homework before or after school. This space is open for students from 7am to 6pm each day.

In the VCE Program, students have been focusing on understanding command terms when responding to questions. Command terms such as define, describe, analyse, explain and discuss require different structures and levels of detail. Misinterpreting these can result in lost marks when key content is missing or not addressed appropriately.

An example we looked at in VCE program this term:

Describe the Parkdale Secondary College uniform (3 marks)

Describe questions require students to provide details of the characteristics and features, without evaluation or opinion of their effectiveness or popularity with students. Students were encouraged to imagine explaining the uniform to someone over the phone.

The Parkdale Secondary College uniform features navy blue, green and yellow with white accents, presented in striped or checked patterns. The uniform includes a range of items such as dresses, skirts, shirts, jackets, shorts and pants, allowing students to dress appropriately for different seasons and weather conditions. All uniform items are gender neutral, providing flexibility and choice for student comfort and preference. Leather school shoes are required as part of the uniform to meet OH&S requirements for practical and specialist subjects.

Analyse the comfort of the Parkdale Secondary College uniform

Analyse questions require students to examine a topic in detail and explain how different elements contribute to the overall experience. These questions typically carry higher mark allocations and require deeper reasoning and justification.

The Parkdale Secondary College uniform is designed to balance comfort with the practical demands of the school environment, enabling students to participate fully in both academic and practical learning activities. The availability of different style options in shorts, pants and shirts allows students to select items that best suit their body shape and personal comfort, which supports students to participate in all aspects of the school day. The use of blended natural and synthetic fibres contributes to comfort by allowing garments to be breathable while also maintaining durability, ensuring the uniform items retain their shape without stretching or shrinking when washed. While students may perceive leather school shoes as less comfortable than runners, this design choice reflects the requirement to meet OH&S standards in practical subjects. This demonstrates how comfort is balanced against safety, highlighting that student wellbeing is supported not only through physical comfort but also through protective design choices.

A common reflection in examiners reports is that students often lose marks, not through lack of content knowledge, but in accurate application of knowledge to the question being asked. Students have downloaded their subject VCE Study Designs and identified the command terms, within the key skills section, the first outcome. These key skills clearly outline the types of questions students should expect on the SAC and exam for each area of study. For example, if a key skills is that students must be able to compare two business marketing strategies, they must ensure they understand the elements required in a compare response, how to structure a high level response that shows the similarities and differences and some key terms or phrases that help provide clarity to their response, such as ‘ in model one … whereas in model two…

The study designs are a great resource for parents to initiate conversations with their children about the content and skills they are currently studying or are coming up in the next outcome.

Year 11 students will participate in a three-day Futures program at the start of term 2. This program has been developed to support our students as they begin making decisions about their pathways beyond secondary school. Consent and payment can now be made on Compass.

Our VCE VM students have successfully completed their White Card training and Safe@Work certificates in preparation for their work placements.

Year 11 and 12 Parent Teacher Interviews

We remind parents and carers that the Year 11 and 12 Parent–Teacher Interviews will be held on Tuesday 17 March. Further information about bookings will be sent via Compass next week.

Year 10 Global Kitchen

by Gabi Skaltsis