From the Assistant Principal

Years 7-9

Congratulations! NAPLAN 2021

You may have heard in the media recently that Victorian students have recorded the country's highest NAPLAN results this year, despite the significant challenges presented by the pandemic and remote learning.  Victorian Year 7 students improved in reading, writing and spelling compared to 2019 (there was no NAPLAN in 2020) and had the highest scores in the country for reading and numeracy skills.  Victorian Year 9 students topped the nation in spelling.

I am delighted to be sharing the news that Auburn High School students have also done incredibly well, once again outperforming the State in growth and achievement.  We are so very proud of our students and staff on this remarkable outcome four years running.

Particularly pleasing is our student data in the area of Writing; a priority focus in our School Strategic Plan.  Staff have been working hard in Professional Learning Communities both onsite and during remote learning to develop their practice in the explicit teaching of tiered vocabulary, and supporting students to employ subject specific terminology in their written responses.

We are well ahead of our 2021 target, which was to increase the number of Year 9 students achieving within the top 2 bands of NAPLAN to 20%.  We have exceeded that goal, with 28% of students achieving in that category.  Even more pleasing is the relative growth of our students, with 45% percent of Year 9s in the ‘high growth’ band; up from 31% in 2019.

We are proud of these results not merely as numbers, but because they represent the resilience and commitment to learning from individual students, despite the rollercoaster ride of the past 18 months.  The pandemic has presented a range of challenges that have been uniquely felt by each student, each staff member and each of our families.  It is wonderful to see the positive learning culture at AHS thriving and reflected in this way.  I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my colleagues for their dedicated work, to each and every student for continuing to try their very hardest come what may, and to all our AHS parents and guardians for your support and encouragement behind the scenes.  It does take a village.  Well done everyone!

Our new senior school building – Student workshop

AHS students took part in a workshop with our project architects, engineering consultants and colour consultant for our exciting new senior school building.  They used the Colorsmith app to create brand new colours and to develop their own colour story before listening to a fascinating colour theory presentation.  They will even receive a sample pot in the mail of the unique colours they created to try out at home (!).

In the second part of the session, students found out all about various building design elements such as water recycling, solar panels, thermal insulation, ventilation and climate control, and asked some really insightful questions.  We were pleased to learn that the design will include numerous sustainable features such as floor surfaces made from 100% natural material, rain water tanks, and integrated rubbish/recycling bins.  The design requires some excavation of the siltstone cliff face, with the excavated materials then being incorporated in the building design which includes an indoor garden in the central atrium area.

A display has gone up in reception and in the student entry with detailed plans and concept images.  As it might now be a little while until students can view that onsite, a digital version is coming soon to our website and Facebook page.

Thank you to Wowowa Architecture, Lucid Consulting and Taubmans for facilitating, and to those AHS students who attended and participated so actively.