Senior School Report

ACACIA CAMPUS

Senior School Course Counselling

Students from Years 9, 10 and 11 will be selecting their senior courses for 2022. In Senior School, students have the opportunity to tailor their course to their personal interests and aspirations. Guided by course counsellors consisting of Senior School staff, the students will attend a course counselling session in order to ensure they select a bespoke course that aligns with their future goals. Parents and guardians of all students are encouraged to attend these sessions with their kids, as Keysborough College sees the school-family relationship as a crucial aspect of student development. Students will be provided online sign-up forms in order to book a time when they and their guardians can meet with the counsellor. The dates for the respective year levels are:

Year 11 into Year 12 – Monday 9th August

Year 9 into Year 10 – Monday 16th August

Year 10 into Year 11 – Tuesday 24th August

Prior to attending these sessions, all students and parents/guardians are encouraged to look through the senior school handbooks and subject videos located on the Student Intranet under the Senior School tab.

Year 10 Work Experience

Acacia campus had the opportunity to offer the Year 10 Work Experience program this term in Week 4. Ninety five Acacia Year 10 students completed their placements out in the community gaining experience within a variety of workplaces including early child care, education, pharmacies, dentists, small business, retail and trade industries. 

We acknowledge all the work of our staff, students and the support of our parents to enable this program to occur.  We are sincerely grateful to the employers for ensuring these placements were successful during these challenging times and are thankful for their ability to take the students on such short notice due to restrictions easing. As noted by our College and Campus Principals ‘ The students have missed out on a number of experiences in the last year and a half and being able to host them in their work experience placements allowed them to feel they were undertaking a normal program. This was paramount for the college community to try and create a meaningful experience for our students.’

We have received a great amount of positive feedback from their Work Experience employers and the community and have had many students offered continued employment as a result of their Work Experience placement. We look forward to hearing all about the experience the Year 10 Work Experience students had whilst out in the workforce. This program demonstrates our college commitment to supporting students to be active community citizens and life long learners. 

Study Buddies Alumni Tutor Program

The Student Engagement & Wellbeing Improvement Team has been working across the College in a range of areas that continually focus on the Strategic Plan goals and targets. The ‘Happy, Active and Healthy Kids Priority’ emphasises the need for schools to focus on factors that allow students to develop and achieve their best through building confident and resilient learners. A key target is to provide support, strategies and resources to assist students to manage their own learning and become self-directed learners. 

The Improvement Team and Senior School Leadership Team will be introducing the Alumni Study Buddy Tutor Program. The Year 12 Study Buddies program was implemented College wide in 2018 as a result of VCE data analysis related to high performing and high achieving students. The data indicated that students, who had regularly attended study sessions after school with small groups of committed students were all students who achieved high VCE results. There is a great deal of research that indicates students, who participate in additional opportunities to share their understanding of concepts and skills, improve their overall knowledge. The College has made a commitment to the Study Buddies program through purchasing additional study resource materials and teachers attend when they can because we want to assist students to be confident, resilient and self-directed learners.

We are proud to announce the extension of this program further after conducting forums and seeking feedback from Year 12 students regarding how they could be assisted to improve their study skills and results. The overwhelming request was to have tutors that could assist with targeted support and revision of core content and concepts on a regular basis. The College is therefore implementing its first ever ‘Alumni Study Buddy Tutor’ program. We are investing in our high performing Alumni students by offering them a position on the tutor team to work with Year 12 students during ‘Study Buddy’ sessions as tutors. The selection process identified Alumni who achieved high ATARs, were familiar with the current VCE study designs and demonstrated confident communication as well as a motivation and desire to contribute to the College. This unique program demonstrates the commitment the College has made to improve the life-long learning habits and learning confidence of our Year 12 students and to invest in our high performing Alumni to raise student performance and results.

Mrs Hughes

Assistant Principal - Senior School

Acacia Campus

BANKSIA CAMPUS

It has been a very big term for the Banksia Senior School.  Multiple lockdowns have thrown much of our plans into disarray, but as always our Senior School students have shown an incredible amount of persistence in working through all the challenges that are thrown at them.  It was so disappointing that our Year 10 students were unable to have their Work Experience Week, but the way that students and teachers quickly pivoted to online classes was commendable.  

Our 2022 Year 10, 11 and 12 students have been doing their course counselling for next year.  It has been wonderful to see so many parents join in the WebEx counselling appointments.  Having parental involvement in the pathways decisions that students are making is really important and I thank those parents who have been working with our students through this process.  

The current Year 12 students are busy making important VTAC choices about their Tertiary courses for next year, and I remind all those students to keep checking compass for their SEAS and VTAC appointment times.

Thank you to all our students, support staff, teachers and their parents for all their efforts so far this term.  The world keeps throwing challenges at us, and as a school community we will continue to work through them and do our very best.

Take care

Mr Boyd

Assistant Principal - Senior School

Banksia Campus