PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

Dear Parents and Carers,

Thank you for taking the time to read through this edition of our newsletter. I hope you find lots of interesting information and reflection on some of the happenings around the college over the last few weeks.

National Reconciliation Week.

Last week was National Reconciliation Week. Our Koorie Education Support Officers (KESO), Denise Charles and Richard Fry, offered a number of fantastic resources with our school that were shared with students across different year levels including during Learning Advocate Time (LAT) in the mornings, SURF sessions and in different subject areas.

This year, the theme of National Reconciliation Week was ‘Now More Than Ever’. It’s a reminder to all of us of the importance of pursuing justice and rights for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Reconciliation week is also a reminder of the need to call out racism wherever we encounter it and to actively reinforce the voices of First Nations people in our community. The theme ‘Now More Then Ever’ encourages us to seek truth-telling in history, education, respect and action.

In addition to classroom learning, students could choose to participate in fun lunchtime cultural activities in the library. These sessions were well attended by students from across several year levels. We also used our three minutes of music, three times a day to listen to an amazing selection of Indigenous musicians including Baker Boy, Jessica Mauboy, King Sting Ray, Archie Roach and others. Our IT team have had fun being DJs!

I’d like to thank teachers Hannah Studd and Abbey Speed for preparing and sharing resources for the week. And I’d also like to thank all of our students for their respectful and often enthusiastic participation in these activities. 

New Look School Reports. 

Parents and carers will soon have access to end of semester reports. These reports will look slightly different and contain some new information.

In consultation with teachers, we believe it will be highly beneficial to share common assessment task (CAT) results on end of semester reports. These tasks form the core summative assessment of your child’s learning in each subject and will be represented as a percentage. If a student does not submit an assessment task they will receive ’NS’ (Not Submitted).

Students in Year 9 and above who do not submit assessment tasks, whose results are low or whose attendance rate in a subject is deemed to be unsatisfactory, will not automatically be able to select that elective subject again in future semesters. Students in this situation will be required to have a conversation with Learning Community and/or Sub-School Leaders to discuss their plans for how they will improve their level of engagement and commitment to study if they are given the opportunity to continue with the subject in future.

In addition to the above, the reports will contain a subject description, learning behaviour summary and Victorian Curriculum level. 

It is our hope that these updated reports will give parents and carers greater insights into how your children are engaging in their learning, their achievement levels in each subject and that they form the basis of a meaningful conversation at parent / teacher / student interviews.

Litter and Rubbish Around the College.

There is no gentle way to say this - Surf Coast Secondary College has an issue with rubbish and litter! It’s been an ongoing battle for a long time, but we’re determined to fix the situation once and for all. It’s going to take time to develop and action a processes to address this and we will be asking all our students to be more mindful of putting rubbish in the bins, keeping their lockers closed and keeping their school bags zipped and stored away so that the our pesky resident crows do not get into them.

Clean school grounds are more important that we might think. Aside from the obvious aesthetic benefits of maintaining clean and tidy gardens, a clean school also sets a standard of high expectation for all of us who work here - students and teachers alike. 

Another important element is the extremely negative environmental impact that school rubbish has on our local ecosystems. We do not want our waterways, beaches, marine life and other animals to suffer due to our rubbish not being managed properly. 

I’m asking all community members to please be mindful of this issue and support us as we develop strategies to engage students in regular school yard clean-ups next semester.

Kind regards,

Shane Elevato

Acting Principal