Principal's Team Report

Welcome to our first Newsletter for 2024. It is so important to us as a College that our families do access our communications so that we can all celebrate the wonderful work of staff and students.

Welcome Year 7 Families 

I would first like to welcome our Year 7 families and any others new to our College this year. At WHSC we enormously appreciate your support and collaboration. Our Strategic Goals drive our core work:

• Maximise learning growth and achievement for all students
• Build a stimulating environment where students are agents of their own learning
• Improve mental health and wellbeing for all students

Our goals in turn are driven by our vision:

We believe our core responsibility, as an educational learning community, is to give students the opportunity to achieve self-actualisation, which is the fulfilment of their unique talents and potentialities. This also means that as individuals and global citizens, each young person who enrols at our school has the right to achieve excellence in their learning; that they respect the rights of others to learn in a safe and inclusive environment and where respect is the cornerstone of all our actions. We believe that by nurturing personal wellbeing students have the resilience and perseverance to harness creativity in a proactive and collaborative way for the betterment of themselves and the world around them.

Our goals and our vision are underpinned by our key values of  Respect, Excellence and Creativity. This year we have developed our Learning and Teaching Cultural Statements which guides the practices and behaviours of every member of our community:

We really hope that you do take time to unpack these statements with your children so that as a community we are all driven by the common purpose of educating our young  people to become empathic and empowered citizens.

Out of Uniform Pass Process

We have our new Out of Uniform pass process up and running and we are delighted with how most students are using the process effectively. As a uniform school, we have dress code policy in place which has been endorsed by School Council. If you have any issues acquiring appropriate garments, please contact the College and we will do our best to support you.

Thank You - Year 7 Camp

A huge thank you to our Year 7 camp cohort. Mr Ben Shepherd, our Leader of Middle School and Mrs Natalie Benfield, our new Year 7 Learning and Wellbeing Leader were super impressed by the behaviour and attitude of our newest school members. Well done, we are extremely proud of you. I also had the pleasure to spend some quality time with some sevens who did not attend camp and they are fantastic too! 

New Middle School Precinct 

Our new Middle School Precinct is a wonderful space, particularly now that our Year 7 students have their lockers in classrooms  as well as it being a great space for their assemblies too.

School Council - Nomination Form

One of our biggest challenges as a school is parent participation on our School Council. It may seem a daunting responsibility, but it is such an opportunity to directly support the school that your child or children attend. We meet one a month at 6.30pm to oversee the financial wellbeing of the College including endorsing the College Budget, parent payments, camps and so on. The agenda comes out the week before the meeting along with any reports that require reviewing. Having been on a number of School Councils, over many years and in different schools, ours is a positive and collaborative group of people really dedicated to improving our school. The dates for 2024 are as follows:

• Wednesday February 21
• Wednesday March 20
• Wednesday May 22 
• Wednesday June 19
• Wednesday August 21
• Wednesday October 23 
• Wednesday November 20
• Wednesday December 11

If you are at all interested, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Please click the link below for the nomination form.

Celebration Assembly

On Tuesday February 20 we will be having a Celebration Assembly for the top VCE Study Score recipients of 2023 followed by a Morning Tea with families. It is a wonderful opportunity to acknowledge their achievement. Our Presentation Evening for 2024 will be Thursday, December 5 when we will acknowledge our school based VCE achievers as well as our wonderful students in years 7 to 10.

Just a reminder too that NAPLAN will take place from March 13-18. If you have any concerns about your child sitting NAPLAN, please contact the College.

On behalf of the Principal Team, we really do wish everyone a successful and rewarding year.

Take care,

Fern Brisbane

College Principal