Senior School News

We are delighted to have seen our Senior School students embrace a range of activities in and out of class. Highlights have included the Year 12 Formal, excursions in subjects such as Media, Philosophy and Geography, interschool sport and the netball competition just to name a few.

We have seen the VCE students completing a number of SACs across most subjects. We have seen quite a few students in SAC redemption sessions making up SACs they have missed or SACs they did not pass the first time. These students need to use the holiday period to re-set and refocus. Once a student needs to sit a resit of a SAC, the preparation for that interrupts their preparation time for other SACs. If you fail a few SACs it means you are studying for more SACs than everyone else which gets really difficult. Use the holiday period to get ready for all assessments coming up early in term 2.

It has been a difficult period for many students with the need to remain focused on their studies. Most students have done really well remaining focused during the many distractions. I would like to assure parents that we are working hard to ensure that students will not be disadvantaged if school closures eventuate. Our teachers have been busy preparing for the possibility of planning lessons for remote learning. Teachers are planning for delivering lessons through a variety of methods.

The VCAA has provided some advice to schools in preparation should they be dealing with school closures or students self isolating. This advice will become much more specific throughout the year as the effect on students becomes known.

Jeff Micallef

Senior School Leader

Supreme Court Excursion

On 12th March, the Year 11 Legal Studies class went to the Supreme Court of Victoria. We were met by a judge’s associate named Ben Zocco who gave us great insight on what this role involves and answered any questions we had for him. Hearing him speak to us was a real rarity and was incredibly interesting as he spoke to us about the different cases he has been involved in, while he has been working at the Supreme Court being an associate for civil cases.

Unfortunately, due to a juror being sick, we were unable to watch a case. However, we made up for this by conducting a mock criminal case in a courtroom that was a replica of an old British courtroom. Every student had the opportunity to participate in the mock court hearing, ranging from being accused of murder, to being a crown prosecutor, to being a witness of the murder. This provided us all with a first-hand view of what a court hearing actually entails and was excellent in helping us properly understand different roles of people in court.

Afterwards, we went to the Supreme Court library and saw the portraits of all the Chief Justices. We were told that the previous Chief Justice got rid of wearing the red fur coats and the wigs when in court. Also we saw the log book in which Sir Redmond Barry sentenced bushranger Ned Kelly to death. His sentence was “hanged until dead”, which was written in copper. The excursion was an amazing learning experience for all of us!

Alexander Leathley and Sara Lupton

Year 11