Principal's Report

Do it for Dolly Day

The Student Executive have been working diligently in the background and have decided that Do it for Dolly Day is an important cause to support in their fundraising activities (see the information later in the newsletter). This Friday will be a casual dress day to raise money to help prevent bullying at schools. Students are asked to wear something blue and bring a gold coin, which will be collected in Home Groups. If students don’t want to pay, they can just wear full uniform.

Water Update

There is not much progress on the water pipe replacement at this stage and it seems it may drag on for quite a while yet. We had a meeting with Department representatives, who will be putting the project out to tender and be completing some more testing to see the extent of the issue. While drinking and cooking water are still bottled, all other water has been turned back on, so the disruption to the school is minimal.

2022 Annual Report to the School Community

The 2022 Annual Report is now available to the community on the school website. This report is a summary of the school’s progress in a variety of areas, including learning, wellbeing, engagement and financially.

There were many positives that came out of 2022 around learning, such as the learning results shown in the Annual Report's Performance Summary placing our students above similar schools and the state average.

The teacher judgement results of student achievement in English placed our Year 7 - 10 students well above (at 90.6%) the average of similar schools (at 66.6%) and the state average (at 76.3%).

We also had some good NAPLAN results in 2022, showing strong student achievement in their learning. Year 7 reading showed 60.9% of our students placed in the top 3 bands, compared to 53.6% for similar schools and 54.6% for the state average. Year 7 numeracy showed 63.6% of our students placed in the top 3 bands, compared to 50.4% for similar schools and 52.5% for the state average.

Our Year 9s reading showed 58.6% of our students placed in the top 3 bands, compared to 42.6% for similar schools and 47.2% for the state average. Year 9 numeracy showed 46.4% of our students achieving in the top 3 bands, compared to 37.3% for similar schools and 44.7% for the state average.

The 2022 AIP set an aspirational target of increasing the school's mean study score from 25.5 in 2021 to 27 in 2022. This target was met with the mean study score being 27.9 in 2022. This result was very close to the similar school's average of 28.1 and not far off the state average of 28.9. Another achievement in 2022 was that 100% of eligible students satisfactorily completed their VCE and VCAL certificates.

These are all really positive results and everyone should be proud of the learning and achievements that were made in 2022. While the Department tends to focus on these particular measures to be able to determine the progress of a school, we know that there are so many more ways to see the growth in all our students over a year.