College Principal report

Great to be back!

It is so wonderful to be back full time with all of the students. Everyone has adapted well to the return to school. The Year 7s have been amazing, particularly on Friday when there was no power between 7am and 2.35pm. They stayed positive and continued to learn despite the lack of lights and technology. What a positive example of our value of excellence.

COVID in schools

As you would be aware we have had four COVID positive cases at the College this week, interestingly, we do not believe that they are related to each other. Dealing with Covid positive cases may be part of the 'new normal' in our community and it is how we respond that matters. The new process now involves schools, rather than the Department of Health, identifying and contacting any Primary Close Contacts (PPCs) of positive cases. Primary close contacts are considered to be those who have been in contact with the positive case for an extended period of time - normally 2 hours. In our school, we consider the time period to be a 'double period' or more of contact. We have a learnt a lot over this week about how to manage a response to a case and I thank parents for supporting us as we worked our way through a new process.

The faster we can contact the PPCs the less chance we have of being forced to close our school for 24 hours. It is really essential that parents contact either myself, Vivienne McElwee or David Hall as soon as they can after receiving notification that their child is COVID-Positive. When you call we will need the following information:

1. Date and time of positive result
2. Date of test
3. Date of onset of COVID symptoms
4. Vaccination Status

Students and staff who are double vaccinated will have a shorter isolation period if they are identified as PCCs and siblings of PCCs and other family members are not required to isolate unless informed to do so by the Department of Health. We are fortunate that about 90% of our students are double vaccinated and all of our staff will be by this week.

Any students who are asked to isolate will be provided with access to school work online via COMPASS, will have follow up contact from their Student Manager and will have absences covered by the College using a new absence code in COMPASS.

I thank the community for the support they have shown over the past week. We will continue to work hard to ensure that our students remain at school and learning in our classrooms with our great teachers.

Head-start and the end of the year

Head-start runs from the 29th November – 10th of December. Head-start is an early commencement program where students step up to their 2022 year level and begin to undertake the work for the next year.

Year 7 becomes Year 8

Year 8 becomes Year 9

Year 9 becomes Year 10

Year 10 becomes Year 11

Year 11 becomes Year 12

Following Head-start we will be offering school-based activities for our Year 8 and 9 (2021 Year 7 and year 8), all other year levels conclude on the 10th of December. Activities will be running on Monday 13th and Tuesday 14th and onsite supervision is available Wednesday 15th and Thursday 16th. 

Many families choose to commence holidays early and to use the the week of the 13th-17th Dec as additional holiday time.  If this is your plan, then please enter a note on COMPASS for your child’s absence. We will be sending out further information regarding activities during Head-start. 

COVID safe changes

QR codes and vaccination

QR Code check ins

Vaccination Certificate requirements