College Principal Message 

May 2021

Dear Families and Carers,

Welcome to Term 2.  Although the weather has turned, we had a wonderful Athletics Carnival on April 30.  Congratulations to all place getters and thanks to the staff team who organised the event.

At the end of Week 1 Natalie Hutchins, the local State Labor Member for Sydenham and Minister for Youth Justice, Victim Support, Corrections and Crime Prevention, visited us to officially open the renovations at Delahey. It was a lovely event, and very fitting that Natalie did the honours given that she is responsible to providing the grant in the first place.  The event’s success was enhanced by the attendance of our College Captains, who were exemplary hosts. I’d also like to thank College Council members, Evan Henry (WPC), Lisa Jackson (Community member) and our President Mandy El Ali for attending on behalf of council; we really appreciated their support and interest. A representative from Western Chances also came which is another indication of the depth of our community connections.  Natalie also provided us with the news that we had been allocated a $30,000 grant for Active Schools.  More about that later.

College Captains Jessie  and Arieta             Mandy El Ali (Council President), Pip Griffiths, Natalie with Natalie Hutchins, Lisa Jackson (Council member)

Our 2018 Dux, Joseph Alkarra, who also happens to be a Western Chances recipient, has returned to do some Maths tutoring at Sydenham, much to the delight of many teachers and students who recognised him from our opening assembly. It is wonderful to welcome back past students who remember us very fondly.

Last term we changed how we did Parent Student Teacher (PST) Conferences at the junior campuses.  by extending the hours available. Interestingly it did not have the desired effect of increasing the number of conferences. Having said that, 2020 conferences took the form of phone calls during lockdown when most people were at home and presumably more available.  In addition, we did not have very long to promote the dates and times given the approval process we went through.  Can I really encourage families to participate in these events, particularly for Student Led Presentations (SLPs).  Your junior campus children should already be talking to you about their learning goals in general and as they relate to their SLP.  The dates for those are September 2 and 3.

Copperfield College is about to undergo a Review which was postponed in 2020 and at the end of it we will have a new School Strategic Plan (SSP) to guide our work for the next four years. The pre-review planning meeting took place on May 4 and Validation Day on May 20. We determined that we would seek three Field Work days and an additional reviewer because of our size, so they can have a day at each campus. During the Validation Day the review panel which includes our Challenge Partners who are both principal class officers from other large multi campus schools, our Council President and our Senior Education Improvement Leader as well as the principal team will briefly visit many classrooms at all campuses to get a feel for the school.  We will explain this to students but it might be good for you to chat with them about it too.  The visitors may ask a few simple questions. The Field Work will also include an after-hours online parent forum, plus an in person one at the start of a day where we will include translators for our main community languages.  We are looking to engage our new Community Liaison staff with the Burmese and African communities.  Students will also be invited to attend student forums at their campuses to talk to the reviewers about their experience at school.  It is exciting that there are so many opportunities for the whole community to be involved.

Copperfield College is being noticed for the right reasons lately. The Deputy Secretary of Education, commends us for our successes, particularly our 97% success rate in VCE and 86% in VCAL for 2020.

Let’s hope we also get recognised for our NAPLAN achievements later in the year. NAPLAN testing started last week and we are assuming our talented students will demonstrate excellent growth since the return to school, tutoring and the potential of being awarded a DET Certificate of Achievement for a high standard or showing good growth between Year 7 and Year 9. 

Our Campus Leaders have devised a new college wide system of leadership opportunities for students which includes role descriptions and selection processes. I’d like to thank them for this work and congratulate the students selected.  One of their first roles will be to consult with students as to how they would like to see the Active Schools grant spent.  It cannot be spent on equipment or grounds work; the aim is to bring in people from community / sporting bodies to run sessions at break times. This is being led by the College Captains who are keen to undertake this task.  We are very excited about this and future prospects to amplify student voice.

A new DET Operations Guide has recently stipulated that students need to wear masks not only on public transport but on school buses.  In addition we need to provide any venue students attend with students’ and teachers’ contact details to help with any contact tracing that may be required.  You will notice that we have added an explanation of this to the excursion permission forms. 

Year 10 students will attend the Delahey Campus on June 9 to experience the campus and speak to teachers of various subjects and courses.  This will be followed by an information evening for students and families of both Year 9 and Year 10 students on June 16.  The aim this year is to bring the subject selection process forward to enable more time to ensure appropriate staffing. It will be very important to attend this event, even if you have had students go through Delahey before because the proposed changes to VCE and VCAL will affect this year’s and next year’s Year 10 students when they move into Year 12 in 2023 and 2024. 

Best wishes,

Pip Griffiths

College Principal