Principal's Report

Wishing all members of our school community a great break, and for those who celebrate, Happy Easter and Eid Mubarak. I hope you enjoy this update showcasing many of the exciting happenings in and out of the classroom at Coburg High.

Iftar

On Wednesday 20th March we welcomed around 100 students, parents and other family members and staff for our annual Iftar. This was a lovely, relaxed opportunity to welcome Muslim families and staff into the school and celebrate Ramadan with them. My thanks to Gary and teachers Mem and Selina for their work on this event and for supporting students during Ramadan. See the article in the 'Outside the classroom' page by Mem along with a report about the recent cultural exchange excursion to the Islamic Museum.

Ride2School

As per the report in the last newsletter, more than 15% of our over 1300 students ride to school each day. Last Friday 22nd March was Ride 2 School Day. To celebrate, Nait from our Wellbeing team ran a series of challenges and gave out prizes to students who rode on this day. 

New bike parking on the way

With the high proportion of students riding to school, and an increasing student population, we have outgrown our existing covered bike parking area. Anecdotally, we have seen that many senior students prefer to park outside the bike shed as they may arrive to school after the start of the school day or leave prior to the end of the school day. A recent survey of students found that 71% would use additional bike parking if it were made available (even if uncovered and without a fence). To that end, a new bike parking ares is under construction in front of the new double portable. This spot is quite central to the road and nearby to the northern entrances to the school, and will be provided with CCTV. We look forward to making this available to students during early term 2. 

AFLW Clinics

Recently we have had Darebin Falcons come to CHS to run four lunchtime football clinics with professional coaches and former Falcons, Carlton AFLW players Jess Dal Pos and Lulu Beatty. We thank them for coming to help guide our female and gender diverse students with their footballing journey.

NAPLAN

Year 7 and 9 students have just completed their NAPLAN tests, with the attendance rate of students completing the tests remaining high. Other than one internet dropout for a quarter of our students in one of the tests, NAPLAN went extremely smoothly.

Technology Building progress

The $17.8m new Technology Building is continue to progress behind the scenes. We are currently towards the end of the tender documentation stage, hopeful of 'breaking ground' in the second half of this year and with an expected open date of 2026.

CHS at Parliament

Our local member, Anthony Cianflone, recently highlighted Coburg High in a speech in Parliament, see below.

With another local Principal, Ross Dudgeon from Newlands Primary School, I recently met with Anthony to press for more school funding as part of the 'For Every Child' campaign.

With Victorian government schools underfunded according to the Schooling Resourcing Standard per student, each year, I encourage you to sign the petition.

Open Day coming up

Our annual Open Day is fast approaching on Wednesday 17 April. Please let anyone who may be interesting in attending know and see here for tickets. See below for a video we produced last year demonstrating some of the things which make CHS a great school, to share with prospective families.

Brent Houghton

Principal