Curriculum 

At McCarthy we aim to foster conversations about teaching and learning in order to develop a shared vision of high quality teaching that impacts on student learning. In leading a culture of improvement and building accountability for quality teaching and learning, we actively encourage collaboration, openness and sharing of practice. A focus on students and teacher development and appraisal is key to increasing awareness of effective practices that occur within our school. 

This approach is demonstrated when students can address the five key learning questions:

What are you learning?

How are you going?

How do you know?

How can you improve

Where can you go for help?

Having clear learning intentions and understanding why the learning is relevant and matters helps students connect what they already know and what their next steps are. When students become active learners they are able to apply feedback and recognise when they are having success in their learning. This culture of learning continues to build to ensure our students are able to achieve to their fullest potentials.   

Year 12 Reports & NESA 

Year 12 Course marks and ranks were uploaded to NESA this week. To ensure fairness across different schools, NESA moderates school-based assessment marks. This means that the school's internal marks are adjusted based on the performance of the school's students in the external HSC exams. The aim is to ensure that the assessment marks are consistent across the state. After moderation, the student's final HSC mark for each subject is typically the average of their moderated school-based assessment mark and their HSC examination mark. For some subjects, particularly those that are more challenging or have a higher level of candidature, marks may be scaled to ensure fairness in comparison to other subjects. Students still have the opportunity to improve their performance and maximise their HSC score. Improvement benefits both the individual and the cohort. 

Year 11 

11 VET Fitness was not initially offered in the recent curriculum offerings for 2025 due to staffing constraints. We have since been able to potentially add this subject as an option for Yr 11 2025 and students were invited to express an interest in adding Fitness to their EOI for 2025. Presently we are working to create lines that maximise students selections.

Stage 5 Electives

Students in Yr 8 and Yr 9 will meet with Mr Whitton and Mrs Sparke prior to the end of term to nominate their preferences for Electives in 2025. The subjects able to be delivered at the school are listed under Stage 5 Subject Selection on the McCarthy Curriculum Website located in School Resources on COMPASS. 

Sally Sparke

Assistant Principal Curriculum

ssparke@arm.catholic.edu.au

Heather Burke

Leader of Pedagogy/Curriculum 

hburke1@arm.catholic.edu.au

Nicole Anderson

Leader of Pedagogy/Literacy Coach

nanders2@arm.catholic.edu.au