From the Principal Team 

Melbourne City FC, Auburn HS and Auburn South PS

Melbourne City Football Club coaches led another high-energy lunchtime clinic this week, but this time we also welcomed our neighbours from Auburn South Primary School to join in the fun! The coaches commended all participants on their leadership and sportspersonship. It was fantastic to team up with our ASPS colleagues and have students out exercising and demonstrating their teamwork skills together!

AAFEBS Conference, Sydney

Auburn High School and Caulfield Junior College principals and teachers attended the Australian Association of French-English Bilingual Schools (AAFEBS) conference in Sydney last week. The event was a great opportunity to collaborate with other Agency for French Education Abroad (AEFE) schools and bilingual French schools in Australia and abroad. 

We’re very proud of our unique range of French language programs. All Auburn High School students undertake 4 hours of French per week until the end of Year 9, compared with approximately half that amount at other government schools. In addition to this, students in our French Partial Immersion program undertake around 25% of their studies in French, whilst our Binational program students are immersed in French for more than 50% of their studies. We know this level of exposure to language learning has positive impacts on literacy and numeracy skill development, as well as allowing our students to develop their identity as global citizens.

The partnerships we have developed with fellow French-focused Camberwell Primary School and Caulfield Junior College allow our teaching staff to collaborate and learn together, as well as supporting students toward a smooth transition to high school. We look forward to welcoming our 2024 cohort of language learners to Orientation Day next month!

Auburn High School: Influence School

Auburn High School has been named by the Department of Education and Training as an Influence School! A school's overall performance group represents its combined performance in terms of Student Achievement, School Climate, Student Attitudes, Engagement, Participation and Senior Secondary outcomes. This level of performance has been maintained consistently over three years, representing a positive improvement trajectory with the school acting as an influencer and system leader. Congratulations to our amazing staff and students on this outstanding achievement! 

The Leadership Team have been working on the development of our new Annual Implementation Plan for 2024, the first year of our new Strategic Plan. We look forward to the further review and analysis of our existing programs and processes with a view to finetuning these as we continue to grow. The focus will remain on consistent best practice, high academic expectations and community connectedness. Part of this work will include the addition or three new Leading Teacher/ Learning Specialist positions with portfolios focused on Student Wellbeing, Community Engagement and Student Leadership.

We welcome Andrea Ganotis to our Leadership Team in the role of Acting Leading Teacher for Instructional Practice. Andrea has held the role of Humanities Learning Area Leader for the past two years and will step in for Louisa Phillipson as she takes some well-earned leave for the final weeks of the year. 

Examinations

We are so very proud of our Year 12 cohort as they have embarked upon their final examinations over the last week or so, their hard work paying off as they tackle this final challenge. The spirit of the Year 12 community has been evident as students have supported and encourage each other during this intense period. They’ve been outstanding role models to Year 10 and 11 students who have also been sitting exams, as well as to Year 9, who have sat practice exams for the first time this week. Congratulations to all on their aspiration and effort.

Building project

We are now at 60% completion of our new senior building! We now have windows, doors, really lovely brickwork and the roof is going up this week. The Leadership team had a site walk-through last week with our project manager, who showed us through the learning spaces as they start to come together. It’s exciting to watch the progress of the work from Auburn Road, and the view from the oval is even more so! The current estimation date of project completion is April 10th.