PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

Dear Parents and Carers,

Term two is off to a flying start with lots happening around the college. That you for taking the time to look through the articles in this newsletter to see what your children have been learning and celebrating.

ANZAC Day Commemoration Services

Last week all staff and students came together for our annual ANZAC Day Commemoration Service. This is an extremely important annual event where we gather as a school community to acknowledge the contribution of all those who have served Australia, including those that have died, in times of war and war-like conflict.

The service was held in the College gym and led by our College Captains who were remarkable in the way they spoke and presented to their peers. Looking out across the space at hundreds of our students all sitting and listening respectfully throughout the service was a point of pride for the school leadership team. Our students are to be commended for their respectful behaviour and the way they presented in full SCSC school uniform. It really was fantastic to see and I share my personal thanks to each and every student present at the event.

On April 25th I had the honour of joining our College Captains and the Torquay ANZAC Day dawn service at Point Danger. Our College Captains commenced proceeding by reading to thousands of people in the public audience before our Vice Captains were invited to lay a wreath on behalf of the college. Again, our Captains were exemplary in representing our College with many people commenting on how impressive they were.

Racism Prevention and Intervention Policy

At our last meeting of the School Council, we ratified and new school policy – Racism Prevention and Intervention. 

In 2023 the DET developed a range of new resources to support school communities to understand our obligations, rights and responsibilities in preventing and intervening in instances of racial prejudice on our campus and in our community.

At times, young people can use terms and language the full extent of which they may not entirely understand. Sometimes these terms can be picked up from peers, social media, music and films. Often our young people are unaware that they may have said something offensive. In some instances, students may say things to deliberately hurt another person in the heat of the moment if they feel upset. This new policy will help us as a community address instances of racism or racial discrimination by clearly outlining the rights and responsibilities of all school community members – students, staff and parents – when it comes to preventing racism or intervening if racism occurs. 

This new policy sits alongside our existing Diversity and Inclusion Policy and will be introduced to students in age-appropriate ways over the coming weeks. We will be taking an educative and informative approach to this issue rather than a punitive approach so that we can support all our students to work together with a sense of positivity and understanding as we put this policy into action.

School Uniform Update

I’d like to say a BIG thank you to all students and parents for the pride we are seeing in the SCSC uniform. It is now quite rare to see students not wearing uniform items from our extensive uniform options. 

Recently the school council, who are the governing body on uniform decisions, received communication from some parents requesting that grey Dickies brand pants and shorts been considered as acceptable uniform items. These pants and shorts are considered to be high quality, hard wearing, comfortable and a preference that many students would be happy to wear.

After careful consideration and discussion the school council unanimously supported this request. We acknowledge that as the school governance body we were happy to respond to parent and student voice on this matter. 

Moving forward, students may continue to wear grey or charcoal cotton Dickies pants and shorts. This does not include, cargo pants, cargo shorts, denim or other colours such as blue, navy or black. We will soon update our uniform policy to reflect this change with examples of the acceptable Dickies pants. If parents would like more information in the short term prior to purchasing new pants or shorts, please contact your child’s Learning Advocate. 

As always, thank you for your ongoing support of our College. SCSC is continuing to grow and go from strength to strength!

Take care,

Shane Elevato

Acting Principal