Principal's Update 

Last Week's Lockdown

As you would be aware, our Mentone Campus went into lockdown on Wednesday 4 September for approximately 1.5 hours. Police were in contact regarding a threatening Instagram post. In their initial investigations, Police felt that St Bede’s College Mentone may be a target and alerted the College. Working together, we placed the Campus into lockdown. As the investigation unfolded, it became apparent that the College was not at any risk based on this post and the lockdown was lifted. 

I encourage any students who need counselling support as a result of this to reach out to our College Counsellors or to speak with a trusted teacher. The Student Wellbeing section in this newsletter provides further guidance.

My thanks to our community for feedback received in relation to the lockdown. As part of our review of procedures, all of this feedback is considered.

Public Speaking

Congratulations to our Intermediate Public Speaking Team that participated in the ACC Competition at Mazenod College.  Zane K (Year 9), Oran J, Nicholas S and Luke K (Year 10) were announced joint winners with St Bernard’s College! This win goes with our ACC Competition win by the Senior Public Speaking team earlier in the year.

The “Home Stretch”

In a year of the Olympics and Paralympics, the notion of 'flying to the finish line', and striving for your best has been demonstrated in so many ways on our television screens.  Now, part-way through September, our Year 11 and 12 students are certainly setting out for their finish line. Many images are conjured up as we consider the term “home stretch” - it is the final part of the race, the big push to the finish line, the running through the line, not just up to the line, the excitement of watching how we can be “faster, higher, stronger.” 

So too, with the academic year for our Senior Students. The assessment tasks have been the foundation, preparation and the training; now we rehearse and fine tune for the examinations. Just as in any race, we do not want to merely saunter over the finish line; we want to run our hearts out, look ahead, push ourselves right up to the finish, and then celebrate that we can honestly say we did our best.  

Year 12 students preparing for VCE examinations will complete Trial Examinations during this term-break. Provided that you prepare well, and give of your best, these trials are full of learning opportunity. This rehearsal will allow you to have the experience of completing a series of examinations within a short space of time; you will learn of mistakes in your approach to completing examinations; you will learn of any knowledge short-falls.

If you adopt a positive mindset, you can then work with your teachers to identify those aspects which will enable you to improve your overall grade in November.  Remember, these Trial Exams are just that - a trial.  Much growth is still possible if you learn from the experiences of that trial.

Annual Report to the College Community

As part of the funding agreement between the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria (CECV) and the Australian Government, schools must report on specific categories of School Performance Information. This information is supplied to the College community in many ways that include (but is not limited to): our regular Newsletter; an Annual Report to the School Community, the annual College Journal, Instagram and our website.

I am pleased to inform you that 2023 St Bede’s College Annual Report to the School Community has now been released by Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) and is available on the College website here, below and upon request from the College Office.   

The report covers three key areas:

• Professional Engagement
• Key Student Outcomes, and
• Value added

NAPLAN and St Bede’s College

The release of the 2024 NAPLAN results and data has seen the annual commentary about the performance of schools, teachers and education in Australia. Headlines paint a grim picture of falling standards. Other commentaries and “expert opinions” are given about the validity of the testing, the stress and pressure put on students, the time some schools give to “teaching for NAPLAN,” the need for “back to basics”, the capacity of schools to interpret the data, and so on.

The latest NAPLAN results, released by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), indicate that student performance across Australia has remained broadly stable compared to 2023, with minor fluctuations across various domains and year levels as is to be expected. Due to changes made to assessment processes, comparisons made with NAPLAN results prior to 2023 are no longer valid, so there are only two years of comparison available. 2024 data for Australia shows that around 10% of students fall into the “Needs additional support” category in both literacy and numeracy, with rates slightly increasing in the higher year levels. The data also underscores persistent disparities among students from different socio-economic backgrounds, non-urban areas, and Indigenous communities. 

At St Bede’s College, we broadly support any testing that provides schools, educational systems and governments with consistent and reliable data upon which future policy direction can be determined - this was the original, and continued purpose of National literacy and numeracy testing. 

Provided that authorities continue to monitor the validity and use of NAPLAN testing, we need to recognise that it currently remains as a nationally recognised and standardised test that provides valuable information on student progress - governments, to education systems, to schools; but somewhat less so to parents.

For schools and parents, NAPLAN results are just one data source of student progress.  We also have available to us Alwell testing, regular assessments, assignments, tasks and examinations, daily student performance in the classroom, teacher observation and knowledge of the student. The teacher has access to the current and past years’ performance on every formative and summative assessment undertaken.  

Student progress can be clearly monitored and the teacher can see whether the performance on any assessment is “below,” “at” or “better than” the student’s expected level. NAPLAN provides an additional ‘point in time’ snapshot of student capabilities, but drawing meaningful conclusions from such data alone, has its limitations for the individual student. However, the NAPLAN process of standardised testing, when analysed at the school level does reveal information about our school. It also provides national comparisons and benchmarks to aim for, helping us to improve the overall performance of our students.  If a deficiency is discovered in any particular year cohort, or for a particular group of students, or in certain tests or even parts of the test, we can acknowledge and address those shortfalls.

NAPLAN assesses the literacy and numeracy skills that students are learning through the school curriculum and allows Parents and Carers to see how their son is progressing against national and state standards. The 2024 NAPLAN data for St Bede’s College indicates an improvement in performance on that of 2023.

Performance: The score in each test must be viewed in isolation and not compared to the score in one of the other test, i.e. a score of 550 in Reading does not equate to a score of 550 in Writing or any of the other tests. The performance of students in a test, however, can be compared to the average performance of all students in their year level in Australia or in Victoria.

Proficiency Standards: NAPLAN is not a pass or fail type of test.  Individual student performance is measured using 4 proficiency levels for each assessment area and the expected performance for that year level. Against the expected performance level, a student will be shown as “Exceeding”, “Strong”, “Developing” and “Needs additional support.”

Year 7 - 2024 averages for St Bede’s College (compared to National/State) 

Our Year 7 performance is above State and National levels in each of the test domains and shows improvement from 2023 in Writing, Spelling by a considerable margin, and in Grammar & Punctuation. Numeracy is still substantially above the State and National level, but there was a small decline from our 2023 performance. Proficiency levels, both upper and low, reflect the poorer performance in Grammar & Punctuation across Australia in this year’s testing.

Year 9 2024 averages for St Bede’s College (compared to National/State) 

Our Year 9 performance was again pleasing relative to State and National norms, though a little up and down relative to our 2003 performance.  Though our Year 9 Writing levels improved on last year, they did not keep up with improvement at the State level.  Once again, nation-wide concerns over the results in Grammar & Punctuation are mirrored in the performance of our Year 9s.

The change to testing procedures in 2022 means that all schools will need figures for another couple of years to properly identify trends and needs. In line with trends across the country, and including Victoria, this year’s testing has identified national and school concerns with student performance in Grammar & Punctuation.

From Student To Staff

Many people finish secondary school, never to return to the classrooms and hallways that played such a significant part in their educational journey. Then there are the passionate ones who do return – by choice! We are very proud to have 40 members of staff who are former students, or Old Collegians as they are known. Each of them come to work each day with a unique perspective on what it means to be a Beda Boy.

I caught up with teacher Ben McManus (Class of 2013) to chat about his experience from student to staff.  

Tell us about your role at St Bede’s College.

My role at the College is classroom teacher, teaching VCE Physics as well as Maths and Science across other year levels.

How long have you been on staff with us? 

This is my third year of teaching at St Bede’s; however, I also have worked as an external ACC hockey coach for a couple of years prior to starting.

Where did your career journey take you from College to working here? 

Initially I had no interest in teaching after leaving school; however, through some Junior Coaching and tutoring, I found that I much preferred working with, and helping, young people rather than the Engineering course I was studying. Safe to say it was the right decision to change to Teaching.

What is it like to work where you went to school?

It was very strange at first, training myself to call my old teachers by their first name. At the same time, it was very beneficial as I already had a great understanding of the culture and values of the school. I also found having similar experiences and background to the students was great for building relationships.

Tell us an interesting story about your time here as a student.

There was one year when all four houses tied for the Athletics Day Trophy. I think the scoring system was changed after that year.

What is the biggest change at the College since you were a student?

The size of the school has changed drastically. While always being a large school, it seems the number of students and staff has grown immensely, helped by now having two campuses. It seems the nickname for the Dingley bus has been lost in time, but it will always be the “Peach” to me.