Middle Years

Hello, Middle Years families, and welcome to the 2025 school year. 

Students have made a great start to their year, and it has been lovely to see them back on campus and sharing stories after the summer break. The Year 7 students are settling into life at the Senior School, the Year 8s are getting organised for the year ahead, and the Year 9s are excited about the adventures as part of the Year 9 Experience. 

I have a couple of operational updates to share with you:

2025 mobile phone procedure

With growing research demonstrating the harms and distractions caused by mobile phones amongst adolescents, we have adapted our school mobile phone policy for Year 7 and 8 students. Mobile phones will be locked in phone lockers in the Middle Years Centre for the full school day, eliminating the distraction.  The students have been informed of this new process:

• Year 7 and 8 students arrive at school and immediately place their phone in their allocated slot in their House phone locker. At the end of the day, the lockers will be opened, and students will collect their phones. Both phone drop off and pick up will be supervised by a teacher.
• Year 9 students must lock their mobile phones in their lockers each day. If you need to contact students throughout the school day this can be done via Reception (5572 1355) and the admin staff can pass on a message. If students are found using their phone during school hours, there are consequences as outlined in Kristen Waldron’s message.

We aim to minimise the negative impacts of mobile phones here at school, while still catering for communication between students, parents and the school.   I hope that you will support this new process and working together, I am sure we will see significant benefits.

Visitors and parents dropping off items during the school day

As per the Child Safe policies, any school visitors must sign in at Reception in the Tower Building on Chaucer Street before entering the College grounds. If any parents/guardians need to drop off a student's lunch/laptop/uniform or any other item, please do this via Reception and not directly to the Middle Years Centre.

I’m excited about the year ahead for the Middle Years, and I hope the students in Year 7, 8, and 9 will be as well.