PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

As we say goodbye to August and welcome September’s spring air, we also today close out another busy 2 weeks for our college full of fantastic learning, extracurricular activity, and preparation for our Year 12’s to start to finish unit 4 learning content, prepare for exams and finishing of their secondary education. It sure is a busy time, but it is so important that we always stop to think about our why? Last week our year 12’s completed another elevate session to support their preparation for the next few weeks. Understanding the ‘why” and staying true to this purpose is a key strategy to navigate the highs and lows of any journey. Achieving optimal performance in anything in life starts from within and understanding the why and the purpose. Our elevate sessions always come back to this and our staff focus on supporting all our students to discover their sense of identity, self -worth and purpose within our 6-year secondary education learning journey at WHC.

Year 7 2024 Welcome Evening

This coming Wednesday evening we commence welcoming our new 2024 Year 7 students and their families, carers and loved ones into our college. The purpose of the evening will be to enable our new students and their families an opportunity to commence making a connection with our community, our staff and each other as we commence the process of transitioning this special group of young people into our community. This evening is the first step which will follow up with our 2 planned orientation days for our new Year 7s in term 4 and ready to learn meetings with parents and carers of all incoming Year 6 students.

State Runner-Up

A massive congratulations to our Intermediate Boys and Senior Girls AFL Team who finished runners-up in the state final of the SSV AFL Intermediate Boys and Senior Girls Grand Final last week. Our students acquitted themselves and represented the college with grit, determination, and a willingness to never give up with both sides narrowly tasting defeat in very closely contested games. The lose hurt, but the students are keen to continue to learn, grow and get better in 2024 and we are seriously excited by what they can achieve together as a group during the next few years. Well done to all students, coaches and supporting staff and the army of parents and family supporters who travelled to Bundoora to watch and support our students.

A big congratulations to our intermediate boy’s netball team who also lost a heart stopping close state final by 1 goal in the last few seconds of the game. That’s sport, and I’m sure the boys (predominately from a basketball background) will learn and grow from the experience.

Our senior girls’ soccer team also represented our college in the state final this week. Although not coming away state champions we are incredibly proud of our young group of girls who represented the college.

Learning Conversations

Our Year 7 - 12 Learning Conversations will be conducted next Thursday 14 September between 11am and 7pm and Friday 15 August between 9am and 1pm. These conversations will take place on-site and in person but there will be the flexibility for parents and carers to request with the individual teachers an online/or phone interview if that format is more suitable. This will need to be requested after making an interview time with an email to the individual teacher via compass. The teacher can then send you a link for these online interviews.

2023 Parent/Caregiver/Guardian Opinion Survey 

Our school is conducting a survey to find out what parents/caregivers/guardians think of our school. The Parent/Caregiver/Guardian Opinion Survey is an annual survey offered by the Department of Education and Training that is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of families’ perceptions of school climate, student behaviour, and student engagement. We encourage all families to participate in this survey. Our school will use the survey results to help inform and direct future school planning and improvement strategies. 

A random sample of approximately 30 per cent of parents/caregivers/guardians have been selected to participate in this year’s survey. The Parent/Caregiver/Guardian Opinion Survey will close on Friday 8 September.

The survey will be conducted online, only takes 20 minutes to complete, and can be accessed at any convenient time within the fieldwork period on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, or smartphones. The online survey will be available in a range of languages other than English. These include Arabic, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, Chin (Hakha), Hindi, Japanese, Somali, Turkish, Punjabi and Greek.

Thank-you to all our parents, caregivers and guardians who have already completed the survey.

State School Spectacular

Next weekend our fantastic students involved in the State School Spectacular will perform at the National Tennis Centre. I am so excited to see our students perform in this wonderful opportunity of performing arts and music. Well, done to our students who are performing and to Amanda Dickson, Matthew Bolton and Gary Beasley for their wonderful support of our students. I will look forward to sharing more news about this activity in our last newsletter for the year.

Spring is my favourite time of the year, often with crisp mornings and great sunshine, longer days along with footy finals when your team is involved – Go the South Barwon Swans!

Enjoy your weekend and take care,

Fiona Taylor

Principal

Child Safety at WHC

Western Heights College is a child safe organisation committed to protecting students from all forms of abuse.

Our College has stringent protocols in place and endeavours at all times to be fully compliant with the Child Safe Standards set out under Ministerial Order 870.

Our College has the following documents and policies in place to achieve compliance with the Standards. All of these documents are available for downloading on our website or contact the school for a copy. 

1.       Commitment to Child Safety

2.       Child Safety Policy

3.       Child Safety Code of Conduct

4.       Child Protection Policy and Procedures

Annual privacy policy reminder for 2023

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy.(found on the college's webpage)

Please take time to remind yourself of our school’s collection notice, found on our website. For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents and carers on the webpage. This information is also available in 10 community languages:

* Amharic

* Arabic

* Dari

* Gujarati

* Mandarin

* Somali

* Sudanese

* Turkish

* Urdu

* Vietnamese.