Although I only began in Week 2 of Term 4 last year, I have felt a strong sense of belonging to the college and this is partly due to the welcoming and friendly learning community we have at Koo Wee Rup Secondary College. With the addition of some new Leadership Team members this year alongside our existing staff at the college, there has been a strong feeling within the school that positive progress is being made to ensure we achieve the best student outcomes.

Within the first five weeks of Term 1, we have had an opportunity to welcome our new Year 7 students through a student-led full school assembly, the Year 12s have attended a City Camp and we were able to run a successful 2024 House Swimming Sports (despite the power outage drama the day before this event!). With each of these events, I have been extremely proud of the way in which students have conducted themselves in these environments and the respect they have shown for each other and our staff.

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support

Late last year, we were fortunate to find out that we were successful in an application we made for obtaining departmental support for introducing School Wide Positive Behaviour at KWRSC. School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) is a systems approach for establishing the social, cultural and individualised supports needed for all students to achieve both social and academic success. It is a way to support everyone to create and foster a school where all students are successful and included.

The purpose of SWPBS is to assist the school in selecting and identifying the effective, efficient, and evidence-based things that we can do to support all students to experience success.

Evidence-based features of SWPBS include:

prevention
defining and teaching positive social expectations
acknowledging positive behaviour
arranging consistent responses to challenging behaviour
maintaining ongoing collection and use of data for decision-making
establishing a continuum of interventions

Although this will be a 3-4 year implementation journey, I look forward to providing you with updates as we progress.

SWPBS Survey

One of the first things we are undertaking as part of the implementation of SWPBS, is a review of our current school values. As many of the features of SWPBS are centred around school values, it is important we use this opportunity to reflect upon our current values and whether these align with the future direction of the college. As part of this process, we are seeking feedback from all of the KWRSC Learning Community and we invite parents/carers and community members to complete a short survey that will help guide our thinking in this area. Please find a link to this short survey. (Open until 19th March).

Over the next couple of weeks, we will also run some student focus groups to hear from our student cohort and your child may be selected for this feedback.

New Basketball/Netball Courts and Playground

In recent weeks, we have had the opening of our brand new basketball/netball courts and a playground. This new equipment has been utilised extremely well at recess and lunch times, and is an excellent addition to the sporting precinct area we now have at the college.

Blackfish Bulletin

February 2024 · 01 Mar 2024

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