PRINCIPAL'S WELCOME
It’s been an exciting start to the term, with our new buildings and landscaping works recently completed. Our Grevillea (Senior School) and Hakea (Arts) buildings are now nearly ready for students, with final touches being made in these areas. Our teaching staff have moved into offices in the relevant spaces and we will shortly be timetabling classes into the new buildings. Our sports oval has also undergone significant improvement works in recent weeks, enhancing the playing experience for our teams. We feel very grateful to have such inviting spaces for learning and teaching in our school as we grow into the senior secondary years.
We held our first careers and subject expo this week, Your Pathway Your Future Your World, and we were delighted to see so many of our families come along to hear about subject information and pathways planning for our Year 8 to Year 10 students. Students had a range of opportunities to try new subjects, engage with domain area staff, hear about the pathways options available to them, and to meet with further education and workplace providers. It was wonderful to hear the depth of questions that students had for staff and external providers about their choices. Significant planning is underway for our first VCE cohorts and we look forward to sharing further subject selection information with families over the coming weeks.
Our 2026 Enhance program for high achieving students commenced this term, with selected students in Years 7-9 invited to participate in weekly extension classes in Maths. The program will run in English in Term 3 and we encourage students to take part in this excellent opportunity to extend their learning.
We have seen a range of excursions and extracurricular events taking place this term, including Mooting, Robotics, the Scienceworks excursion, and a wide range of interschool sports. The break-time clubs program continues to expand, with activities ranging from gaming and arts to sports and culture clubs. We encourage students to take up the many opportunities on offer for them at school.
As the weather turns cooler, we’d like to remind students to make the most of the wide range of uniform options available to help them keep warm. We’re very lucky that our new undercover seating areas continue to expand the locations for students to stay out of the weather on wetter days.
This term, we have introduced Grade Point Average (GPA) for Year 9 students. Already in place for our Year 10s, this reporting provides a snapshot of students’ positive learning behaviours across their subjects. The GPA specifically addresses classroom relationships, learning behaviours, classroom routines and attendance. We encourage all families to log onto Compass regularly, explore the GPA with their child and take the opportunity to set goals for future improvement.
Our senior students will shortly be engaging in mid-year exams and our junior students will be entering assessment periods. Staff will be supporting students with revision and study skills development in coming sessions. This can be a stressful time for students, and we ask families to take time to explore ways to balance revision with the importance of self-care. We encourage families to discuss strategies for positively coping with and managing stress; these are important life skills for students to learn and we’re pleased to be providing opportunities for students to develop them in younger years before they begin their senior secondary pathway.
Casssandra Crevola
Assistant Principal