Principal's Message-

Laura Spence

Dear students, parents, and carers,

I trust all of our students are ready for the holidays. They have certainly had a busy and hardworking Term 1 and are well deserving of some downtime. Since our last COG communication, we have run NAPLAN for Years 7 and 9, as well as other fun events like the Colour Run yesterday, the VM Fringe Festival last night, and one of our biggest events of the annual calendar, Open Night 2025.

We were extremely happy with the NAPLAN event this year, particularly with the participation rate and the student uptake of BYOD, bringing their charged laptops ready to use. Our college does expect all students to have their own device to allow for seamless teaching and learning using the various software and learning platforms essential to contemporary education. For events like NAPLAN, it enabled us to have complete flexibility in scheduling the event, selecting times and days of the week that were most helpful to students, and not needing to rely on limited laptops at school. Thank you, parents, for your encouragement, students, participation, and for having your laptop ready.

Congratulations to the student leaders, particularly from the Interact Club who organised the Colour Run yesterday, you will see more in the following pages of this COG and the great photos. We aim to have as many of our events run by students, and this is an excellent example of this. It wasn’t all students; our staff got involved and had as much fun as the students. It was a busy day into night as our Vocational Major cohort also ran the 2025 Fringe Festival. The creative responses presented last night resulted from 8 weeks of research, development, production, and the event organisation entirely by students. You will also enjoy the photos in this COG edition and be impressed with the quality of our students’ talents and commitment.

Open Night was huge! Initially, we had around 400 people registered, but on the night, it ballooned to between 600 and 700 people. The feedback was exceptional, with hundreds of primary school students excitedly getting around the college and having a go at our excellent offerings. Thank you to our staff, who all gave up their family time to provide the evening and were proud to show off their part of the school. In 2024, we had 9 Year 7 groups; in 2025, we have 10 Year 7 groups; this Open Night has again demonstrated that we are a school of choice for many families. However, we are also committed to the current size of our school, which is a perfect fit for offering every student their pathway choices whilst retaining a community feel with which everyone is familiar. All families are welcome to book a school tour and come and see us during the school day. You will see our beautiful buildings and grounds and walk through our calm and focused classrooms.

Finally, there is some exciting news about the progress of the Early Learning Childcare Centre (ELCC). A builder has been appointed, and clearing work will begin during these school holidays. Commencement will bring challenges as well as opportunities. The challenges will include the removal of the beautiful trees on this part of the property and the temporary disruption to traffic flow on Belar Avenue. We will retain the tree trunks and repurpose them for other college construction and student projects. Hopefully, they will be used in building outdoor furniture like student seating. We will also be provided 30 mature gum trees for planting around the college and ELCC site. You will see in the attached map that there are provisions for ELCC staff and parent car parking, so this should not affect current Belar Ave parking.

The opportunities include employment and child enrolment openings, which will be advertised around April and May by Early Learning Victoria—advertisements for roles such as Early Learning Teachers, Educators, administration, and cooks. Job opportunities are advertised on the Early Learning Victoria website: Work with us | earlylearning.vic.gov.au. You can also fill in an Expression of Interest on the website to stay updated about Early Learning Victoria jobs as they become available. Seeing staff appointments from our community at our new ELCC would be great, so please consider applying.

McClelland College students will also have future opportunities at the ELCC for Work Experience, structured workplace Learning (VM), School Apprenticeships in hospitality and business administration, and childcare. This is a very exciting privilege for our senior students.

Child enrolments for waitlists for childcare and kindergarten places will soon open for the 2026 commencement. The centre will also have spaces for services such as Playgroups and Child Maternal Health outreach, which will be communicated later.

Frankton Council have sent us material about traffic and parking to support our community with the regular expectations, so please keep this in mind, especially since we will have occasions where construction may temporarily increase traffic on Belar Avenue.

For parents who currently drop their children off at Belar Ave, please consider dropping students on Alexandra Avenue (where we have a second and convenient college entrance), Karingal Drive, Lindrum Avenue, or Ballam Park instead and having them walk to school from there; it’s a win-win for students to get extra exercise, and for you to have less time on the busy school section. Take the time to also discuss with your child the importance of road safety, being alert (phones away!), and respect for our neighbouring residents. A reminder that McClelland College students should not be dropped off near Ballam Park Primary School and should not walk through the BPPS car park at any time of the day.

The council would also like to remind our community that Belar Avenue is a ‘Permit Zone,’ which they may have to reconsider once the ELCC is completed. The permit parking is only on the residential side of the street opposite the school, with the 5-minute drop-off and pick-up restrictions on the school side. Please do not park in this zone before pick up in the afternoons, and consider parking further away from the school where it is permitted (e.g., Ballam Park) and having your child walk to your car; this will allow a more significant turnover over vehicles looking to access the 5-minute parking zone and assist with our neighbouring resident's use of the road.

Thank you, students, families, staff, and school council, for another fantastic term. This concludes my first full year as principal at McClelland College. I am incredibly proud of our college and have loved every day. Thank you to everyone who has made me feel so welcome from Day 1. What a wonderful community to be part of! It seems that from now on, I will have to drop the ‘new person’ feeling!

Have a great break.