Principal's Report

Indonesian Cultural Day

Ita Rose has been sharing her passion with all things Indonesian for many years now. Wednesday was the 4th Indonesian Cultural Day that Ita has organised and run for our students. On these days, our students who learn Indonesian through our Language Other Than English (LOTE) program at school get to shine, participating in cultural dances, songs and Anklung playing. What makes these days even more special for our students is the opportunity to engage with various members from the Indonesian Consulate in Melbourne, as well as students from other schools that learn Indonesian. This year, Cathedral College’s Year 7 and 8 students joined in the activities.

Thanks to Bu Rose for her tireless enthusiasm and wanting to share her culture with our students.

School upgrades

If you haven’t been into the school for a while, you won’t have seen the start to our changes in upgrading the school. With a new colour scheme being rolled out for the internal areas, and new carpet, these upgrades will be continuing over the next holidays. The Caf has new furniture and we will be able to replace much of the aging furniture in the classrooms as well.

Staff are going through a clean up process, throwing out disused resources and digitising what they can, in preparation for the staff room upgrade, also occurring in the upcoming holidays. Such a large scale set of updates has been made possible due to an unforeseen underspending of the planned 2023 budget, allowing us to be able to do more than what had been planned and budgeted for this year.

Parent survey update

During Term 3, the school council ran parent survey to seek feedback. Since then, there have been a number of actions already taken, or planned for, that came from the survey results.

Immediate actions (for the rest of this term)

Behaviour concerns: School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) training sessions are scheduled for staff this term to set up the process that will be implemented next year. This is to address positive and negative behaviours and will include consequences for positive and negative behaviours. 

Leadership concerns: The leadership team is being strengthened for 2024, for a more distributed leadership model, with 2 positions currently being filled, with new position of a Leading Teacher – Wellbeing.

Continued work with the school improvement consultants has resulted in improvements in internal processes this year.

Boys’ toilets concerns: Staff are helping to more frequently monitor and record in Compass undesirable activity in the toilets. Students completed a survey for their input into any redevelopment planning. An architect is currently engaged, and after the initial consultation, progressing to concept designs incorporating the student’s suggestions where possible. Further meetings will continue this term to develop these plans.

Long term actions

Full implementation of SWPBS will occur in 2024. This will lead to an increase in more frequent teacher communication, to celebrate positive behaviours. The review of current school processes for 2024 includes the consistent implementation of processes, updated and clearer role descriptions, further opportunities for distributed leadership, investigation to increase opportunities for parent involvement, a reformatting of communication processes (information sharing processes) and the new leadership model.

Staff survey update

Like the school council parent survey, seeking feedback from the staff was also important, to help shape the direction of improvements. There were many similarities to the parent feedback, with some other areas of focus. A summary of the actions that have come from the feedback is provided below:

With quite positive results overall, common positive comments were that the school size allows for every student and their family to be known by every staff member, the amazing environment we are in is well utilised through our programs such as skiing and outdoor Ed and camps and we have many staff working together and supporting each other.

Actions (being implemented immediately and planning for 2024 implementation)

Morning briefings have been replaced with a weekly staff bulletin; the meeting schedule will be revamped for 2024; both actions are to help reduce the number of meetings some staff attend in a week.

Implementation of the new leadership structure in 2024. The leadership team will consist of the Principal, Assistant Principal, Learning Specialist and Leading Teacher (Student Safety and Wellbeing), to provide focussed planning for Teaching/Learning and Wellbeing.

Developing stronger school protocols/expectations for staff and considering the consequences for those who do not meet them.

Continuing with the development and implementation of School Wide Positive Behaviour Strategies (SWPBS). Staff are also seeking clearer expectations and consequences for students who choose not to meet the school’s values and expectations.

Better use of the school’s Curriculum Documentation drive to be able to store all curriculum and planning documents. This includes ‘cleaning up’ and documenting curriculum.

Continuing to update school facilities, as and when possible, to help build pride in our school.