Principal's Report

Report from Westall Principal 2024

Dear Westall Secondary College Community,

Welcome back for 2024. I hope you all had a safe, relaxing, and enjoyable holiday period.

Our student numbers are currently sitting at 650 students. We have 81 new students at Year 7, 600 students in total across Years 7-12 with another 50 students in the Westall English Language Centre (WELC). 110 of our 650 students are International Fee-paying students. 

The new Senior Learning Centre (SLC) is now fully operational and open for business. Landscaping is almost finished with new trees and plants. Security cameras, additional screens, projectors and charging stations are also being added. Our Year 11 and 12 students are loving the space and have now settled in.

With our growth in student numbers, we have added classes at Year 10 and VCE. Two new teacher jobs have been posted online, Maths/Science and EAL/Humanities. We have 16 new staff that have commenced at Westall in 2024 with a total of 100 staff now working across the school. We have a fortnightly lunch meeting with all new staff throughout Term 1 to support their transition into our school. New teachers to Westall also undertake our WIT (Westall Institute Teaching) program in their first 12 months. This is a weekly online learning module that ensures all teachers receive professional learning and coaching in the Westall Way of teaching and learning. EDI (Explicit Direct Instruction) is our teacher instructional model which forms part of the WIT program. I shared an article on the EDI in last week’s compass bulletin. 

EDI drives our teaching and learning model. Along with student learning, wellbeing is the other crucial element we focus on. We know for students to learn effectively they need to feel safe, happy, and connected.

We have a new and bigger wellbeing team in 2024. Chelcie Shoesmith (our new wellbeing leader 5 days per week) starting early March, Meaghan Morley (Mental Health Practitioner 2 days per week), Nadia Papagiannopoulos (Wellbeing and Engagement 3 days per week), Hamdi Abdullahi (Youth Worker 2 days per week), Carly Schreiber (Interim Health Nurse 1 day per fortnight). This team are all based in our Student Wellbeing Centre and supported by Alice Paget (Assistant Principal), Sue Parlanti (Inclusion) and Ellen Rankin (Wellbeing Curriculum and Inclusion Funding)

We deliver wellbeing workshops across all year levels throughout the year. In our student diaries, there is a wellbeing message and activity, a growth mindset quote, and a gratitude prompt every week. I encourage all students to engage with this material in your diaries and for parents and carers to also discuss the weekly wellbeing information in diaries with your children/our students.

This wellbeing stuff is so important that we have added a period every week to all Year 7 and 8 student timetables. This is a weekly 74-minute wellbeing class for all Year 7 and 8 students. Resilience, brain care, social skills, and mindset are just some of the topics. This complements the workshops and other events that will continue to run for students Years 9-12.

Our staff wellbeing is equally important, and this allows us to give our best to your children/our students. Once a term we provide staff with a meeting free week with wellbeing activities in lieu of formal afternoon meetings. I have urged all our staff to allocate themselves a wellbeing hour each week within their 38 hours onsite at school to refresh and recharge.

Some wellbeing research:

Why is student wellbeing important? - Improved outcomes in all aspects of student wellbeing are positively associated with improved outcomes in all other aspects of schooling.

Positive psychological characteristics have been linked to a range of outcomes including academic achievement, fewer risky behaviours, and better physical health in adulthood (Durlak et al. 2011).

Academic achievement - Wellbeing has a significant impact on students’ academic outcomes. Students with a greater level of wellbeing are more likely to experience improved academic outcomes. For example, improving a student’s wellbeing index by one standard deviation can result in an approximate 5% improvement in their expected NAPLAN numeracy scores between years 7 and 9 (Cárdenas et al. 2022). It is therefore unsurprising that wellbeing programs often have a positive impact on learners’ academic achievement. Several Australian reviews have found that school-based wellbeing programs had small to moderate positive impacts on student academic achievement, compared to similar students in control groups engaged in their usual activities. In one case, general academic performance was equivalent to three months of additional learning gain (Dix et al. 2020).

Until next time

Mr Tristan Lanarus

Principal