Curriculum Planning Days 2024

For all families, but particularly those new this year, I am republishing this section from Principally Thinking last year (20 July 2023).

Teaching Update 2024

As you may be aware, concerns have been growing at a national level regarding the high levels of burnout amongst teaching staff and the consequent shortage of teachers. As a response, in 2022 the Victorian government introduced into its staff employment award a mandated reduction in face-to-face teaching time of 90 minutes per teacher per week to be introduced in stages, with full implementation by Term 1, 2024.

Whilst not beholden to this policy, this approach is also being adopted by schools in the non-government sector and while we have different views about how the response is applied, the underlying issue is of similar concern to us.

Rather than reducing teaching time for each teacher each week, as the government schools have done, the Senior Leadership Team, with endorsement from the College Board, have decided to aggregate the time into four Curriculum days, one per term.

These days will be pupil-free. This will ensure minimal disruption to classes, create time for staff collaboration on curriculum, and create opportunities for parent-teacher interviews, where appropriate and timely. Most importantly, this approach helps ensure that we can support our current teaching staff in the work they do in partnership with parents, as well as attract and keep high quality staff in the future.

To minimise its impact on specific learning areas and to maximise accessibility to part time staff, the days of the week of our curriculum days are varied. So that families can plan, the curriculum days in 2024 will be:

• Friday 8 March (Term 1)
• Tuesday 14 May (Term 2)
• Thursday 22 August (Term 3)
• Monday 25 November (Term 4). 

The College will, as it has done previously, facilitate out-of-hours care for Primary students whose families need to access this provision on those days.

Ultimately, we see this as an opportunity to ensuring further enriched learning experiences for all students – experiences for which Donvale Christian College is already known.

It is our prayer that these planning opportunities will ensure that all our curriculum and learning experiences continue to be deeply rooted in a biblical worldview, an aspect so important to our parents since the inception of our school.