Learning & Teaching

Year 12 Parent Teacher Interviews 

Thanks to the parents and students who took the opportunity yesterday to meet online with their teachers to discuss student learning progress and other important aspects of learning and teaching. Teachers reported productive conversations and appreciated the opportunity to meet & greet and learning more about the students in their class. It was a big ask of our teachers to conduct interviews to 7pm after a full day of teaching. We really appreciate their professionalism and dedication to their students. 

VCE Information Evening 

We had a good turnout out for our annual VCE information evening with parents and students of Year 10 early start, Year 11 and Year 12, on Monday 18 Feb. The audience heard from sub school leaders about VCE practises & processes, calculation of study scores and the ATAR, study skills and minimum expectations of learning and attendance at the college. It was great to hear from our panel of current parents past and present students and their experience in VCU. Participants got to ask questions of the panel and the senior school staff in a free-flowing discussion on the evening. The slides and information from this event are on Compass in the 'school resources' tab. 

VCE Information 

Parents and students can locate information about VCE on Compass in the 'school resources' tab. Information includes the 2025 VCE / VCE VM handbook which documents all the VCAA compliant practices and processes/ It is a detailed and comprehensive document. For a lighter read you might like to start with the VCE / VCE VM Summary Handbook Table that captures the key aspects of the handbook for parents and students.  I encourage parents and students to look carefully through the summary table and please get in touch to clarify any information that is unclear. I have also included the VCE Learning Monitoring process which 

Assessment Schedule

The Whole School Assessment Schedule will be released to parents and students on Compass in 'School resources' today. The schedule provides students (Year 7-12) the name and weeks in which the summative assessments occur in their subjects. It helps students to plan their revision and study to align with the assessment schedule. Summative assessments measure students performance at a point in time across a number of skills. 

Learning Monitoring 

One of my new roles this year is the responsibility for learning improvement from Year 7-12 and it is an exciting opportunity that I take seriously. With the leadership restructure we now have a team of Learning Improvement leading teachers (Elise Roper, Yr 12-11, Stuart Horner, Yr 9-10, and Andrew Biggs, Yr 7-8) to drive this work. Our purpose is to work with school leaders and teachers to monitor and track learning growth of all students as individuals and cohorts across the year. 

We are currently reviewing a number of our learning support processes and identifying how we can better support students struggling to demonstrate learning growth and also provide students the opportunity to extend and stretch their skill through learning extension. We have started by expanding our learning monitoring process beyond VCE so now teachers have clear processes and triggers they can use to intervene when students are not showing learning growth. 

Year 7-10 teachers can now refer students to Learning Recovery after school on a Thursday 3:15-4:00 pm in Byrne House, if they require additional support and time to complete set learning activities. Learning Recovery is compulsory and any student not attending will be followed up by the sub-school leader. Parents will be notified via compass and contacted by teachers when this is occurring.

The team is also prioritising how we identify, support and challenge our high achieving students in all classes and would like to offer these students more opportunities for growth and achievement recognition, learning extension and boost in and out of the class. Please attend the Parent Forum at 6pm, Tue 4 March at the College to give us your feedback an ideas on how  we can improve our learning expectations and challenge for students. 

Year 7 and 8 Learning Assemblies 

David Black and I are booking Year Level assemblies in week 6 to celebrate student learning growth and achievement in Victorina Curriculum, PAT and NAPLAN testing and to recognise and celebrate our Year 7 Scholarship recipients. We will also cover laerning monitoring processes, assessment and learning expectations and how to use their developmental rubrics on Maestro. We will introduce and prepare students for the Academic Review Conferences coming up on the 21st March 

Natalie Manser 

Assistant Principal

mar@wantirnacollege.vic.gov.au