Acting Deputy Principal

I would like to offer everyone in our community a warm welcome back to Term 2. This term sees a strong and positive focus on the key areas of pathways, mental health, and literacy. We know that for our boys, these are key areas required for them to thrive and become successful lifelong learners.

In the wellbeing space, this term sees our first group of students undertaking the Live4Life program in mental health and wellbeing. The Live4Life program is being delivered at St Patrick’s College in collaboration with the City of Ballarat, as well as being rolled out at a number of secondary schools across the region. The program is focused on educating young people in youth mental health; and whilst the goal is to promote awareness and knowledge of mental health and wellbeing, the program also seeks to remove any stigma that exists around mental health. This in turn empowers young people, proactively educating them around this important issue. 

Our Year 8’s will undertake this program in Term 2, as our first cohort of students to be educated in the program. As part of this initiative, this week also saw many of our staff trained in Mental Health First Aid. The goal of this program is to have 10 per cent of staff in every school trained in Mental Health First Aid; this week we saw 20 per cent of our staff accredited in Mental Health First Aid, with more training planned in the future. This is a sign of our serious commitment to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of our students.

This term, we are also extremely excited to see the opening of our new Pathways Hub. The Pathways Hub seeks to support our students in navigating the myriad of options that exist around careers, as well as working with them to develop an individual pathway that will allow them to achieve their career aspirations. It is a common misconception that schools are all about ATARs; in fact, our VCE VM is one of the fastest growing pathways at the College. At both Year 11 and 12 in 2024, enrolments in the VCE-VM have grown significantly. The Pathways Hub can be found in the Waterford Wing, encompassing a boardroom, meeting spaces, information, and our careers staff on hand to liaise with students. Our staff have an absolute wealth of knowledge, as well as industry connections and college connections to support students in all aspects of their vocational and tertiary planning.

This term will also see a strong focus on enhancing student literacy skills, through our evidence-based writing program, The Writer’s Toolbox. In English, all students will complete dedicated online learning modules to increase their proficiency in literacy; this will be further supported by the explicit teaching of sentence structure and paragraph construction, at the finest-gran level. In addition, this week all teaching staff have undergone training workshops in expansion and precision. These are a set of writing strategies that will be taught to students, to further enhance their literacy skills. Literacy instruction extends beyond the English classroom and is embedded across every subject area. Writing is an area that nationwide – and in fact worldwide – boys are challenged by. 

As a school, we are committed to supporting our students in developing their literacy skills, through research informed approaches to literacy instruction. We are excited at the ways in which we will be supporting our students in the critical areas of pathways, mental health, and literacy. If you have any questions about any of our programs, please reach out and contact us – we always welcome discussion about your son’s learning journey.