FROM THE PRINCIPAL

Welcome to the 2018 Year!

by Marilyn Smith

As a staff we all look forward to having Blackhall Kalimna once again full of the noise and energy of our students. Teachers have been working intensely gearing up for the year and it is very enjoyable to be a part of the enthusiasm and professionalism they bring to planning the year ahead.

As 2018 is the first year of our International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme we are very focused on attending to the myriad details that need to be addressed. I would love to believe that there will be no teething problems and can assure our families that there has been an enormous amount of professional development, work and preparation undertaken.

Even more importantly, this year marks the last year of our VCE program. It is indeed a watershed year. 

But regardless of which program they undertake, Year 12 is always a very special one for teachers, who have formed strong bonds with the students they have known over several years and who support the aspirations and hopes of every individual as they embark on their final year of schooling.

Our Year 12 students from last year have already moved on; those who have returned to say hello recently already look different; young adults, confident of who they are and ready for the next stage.

We were delighted to find that regardless of their very different course selections all but one of our students gained a First Round offer, with that student intending to go straight into a business start-up! Approximately two thirds of the students gained their first preference in this round and all but one were offered their second preference.

Second Round offers will be made later this week, so some of these second preferences will almost certainly move to first preference offers.

The success in achieving First Round offers is outstanding and attests to the willingness of our students to follow their own pathways into a very wide range of future careers. This breadth of career paths is also evident from year to year, with a third of the students from the 2017 cohort taking up places in Fine Arts, Film, Design, Music and Entertainment. One of the students was successful in gaining entry to the VCA and another student will represent Preshil in the prestigious Top Arts Exhibition.

The next most popular courses were in Arts, followed by Engineering and Sciences.

70% of our students chose universities, with RMIT the most popular choice, then Swinburne, The University of Melbourne, Latrobe, Deakin and Victoria University. Other students took up courses at William Angliss, Boxhill Institute, SAE Media, Ellie Lucas College, Collarts and Melbourne Polytechnic.

I reiterate each year how important it is to keep sight of the fact that the whole point of the VCE is to have students gain entry into the courses they want, to pursue careers that will suit and satisfy each individual. Seeing VCE as a race for the highest ATAR possible is a very destructive view of these young people’s worth and I am proud that Preshil does not subscribe to this narrow view of achievement.

In 2017 we nurtured and supported a group of students who were not predominantly ‘academic’ and we are proud of each and every one of them and look forward to keeping in touch with this newest group of  Preshil alumni.