Principal's Report
We made it! We have successfully completed the foundation year of Bemin Secondary College. This has been an amazing achievement for all members of our school community. I am sure you have noticed that as a College we have provided more and more varied opportunities for our students as the year progressed. As the College Principal I am very proud of BSC staff who have worked tirelessly in the new school environment to provide rich learning activities and I am also proud of the students across both campuses who took up all the opportunities that were presented to them.
Farewells & Thank you
As a College we wish to farewell and thank two teachers who have contributed greatly to our foundation year. Both staff members are highly skilled at building strong rapport with students and delivering their curriculum areas. Will Cooper will be taking some leave as he returns to university to continue further tertiary studies. Fiona Toloa has accepted a learning specialist teacher position in Science at Wyndham Central Secondary College. Best wishes from all of us.
I would also like to take the opportunity to thank the Principal team (Aaron Dass, Sandale Ambegoda, Anthony Asta, Elyshia Sheldon, Bryce Baumgarten and our Business manager, Samantha Kelly for their tireless work since early January this year. Only a few see the hours of work that they have all continued to commit to behind the scenes to support the establishment of a dual campus College. They have been an ongoing support to me as we continue to make decisions centred around our students.
2025 - Enrolments and Staffing
Currently, the College will grow to over 900 students next year. So far, we have employed 38 new teachers and at least another 8 Education support staff to support our rapid growth. Two thirds of our teachers and new leaders are from the Victorian system but we are also welcoming twelve teachers from New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The College requires a further 4 teachers to be fully staffed and I will continue to recruit in January to hopefully meet our targets. For the new teachers based in Victoria we ran our Staff Induction day late November. On this day we welcomed 25 teachers to the College. Our Junior school leaders facilitated a group challenge workshop with our new staff in the afternoon. They certainly kept our new staff and current staff on their toes.
Our Year 10 Welcome evening which was held in late October provided an opportunity for many of our new families to visit and explore the Senior campus. In December we were able to meet all our new 2025 Year 7 students on State Wide Transition Day. Our website provides very detailed information about uniform, devices, ebooks, bus timetables and other key transition information. This information is useful and relevant to ALL year levels https://www.beminsc.vic.edu.au/ as can been seen below:
Leadership Training & Education Support staff
We welcomed retired Principal and Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership presenter, Greg Sperling to the College in the last few days of the term. Greg was the foundation Principal of Point Cook Senior College. He continues to support the development of both the Principal team and our new middle leadership teams at the College through discussions about effective leadership styles, building College workplace culture and how to facilitate improvement conversations. Greg worked with us for two days. During this time he conducted a team building workshop with our Education support staff. Our Education support staff enable all of us to do our work in supporting the students. They come from all areas of the College - Inclusion education, Wellbeing, IT, Business & Administration, Specialised subject support, grounds & maintenance. They are essential to the running of the College and it we thank them for their commitment towards the delivery of a high quality level of support across both campuses.
AWARDS EVENING
Last Thursday evening in the Senior school gym we welcomed over 300 family members to our inaugural awards evening. It was a proud evening where we awarded 85 students for a range of achievements throughout the College year. The award categories included:
Academic Excellence
Academic Achievement
Dux Awards for Year 7 & 10
Early VCE Awards
Interschool Sports Awards
Kwong Lee Dow Award
Local MP - Sarah Connolly Award
Junior School Principal Awards
Senior School Principal Awards
Principal’s Encouragement Award
Principals Award
It was wonderful to see so many students come along to collect their awards. I would also like to acknowledge Senior school musicians - Gabriel Tayat, Jester Creo, and Youngsen Rusmin who performed at the beginning of the evening.
Finally, thank you to you - our parents, carers and families! We thank you for your support, kindness and respect for our profession. We wish you a happy and relaxing summer holiday break where we hope that you will all be able to take some time with your families to enjoy each others company.
See you all in 2025!
College Principal
Joanne Camozzato