Andrew Chisholm

Assistant Principal

Dear Parents and Students,

The start of Term 2 has certainly been characterised by a range of successful activities and events. This term is only 9weeks long and it looks like being action-packed over the next 5 weeks. Some of the events so far this term includes being able to compete in the Generations in Jazz festival in Mount Gambier for the first time in 4 years with both the stage band and choir being lauded for their performances and Estelle Roberts being awarded the best percussionist in the division. The Annual Music Camp at Mt Martha allowed for some intensive ensemble work, whilst the senior boys baseball team have made the state final next week. For the first time JMSS students won 3 events at the StateSwimming Finals. Congratulations to Seojin Hwang and Alyssa Leaver who won 200m individual medley and 50mbackstroke respectively and Neve Anderson, Caitlin Carpenter, Maddie Carter, and Alyssa Leaver who won the 4x50m freestyle relay. 

Special mention must also be made to everyone in the JMSS community who have supported the World’s Greatest Shave initiative run by student parliament to raise funds for blood cancer research. To raise over 22K for this worthy cause is a tremendous effort. 

Exams and the GAT

With the short term of 9 weeks and the extended GAT moving back to June, we are not going to run a traditional mid-year exam period for Year 11 and 12 this year in order to try and maximise class time so that all VCE semester 1units can be completed on time. Instead end of semester SACs for Year 11 and Year 12 traditionally run in an exam period will be completed in class or in group study lessons. Year 10 students will be completing exams in Maths, English, Issues Studies and Science across a 2-day period on June 14 and 15.

The GAT is sat by all students completing a VCE Unit 3 and 4 subject and is on Thursday June 15. The GAT is a very important assessment as it is the only assessment that is completed by all students completing a VCE Unit 3 and 4 study across the state. This assessment is used as the basis for scaling and is also used to calculate Derived ExamScores (DES) in Year 12 if for some reason a student has an issue eg illness in the exam period. 

Science Exhibition Evening

Congratulations to all staff and students involved in this week’s Science Exhibition Evening. It was brilliant to have this event on-site and have our Year 10 students communicate a range of skills and knowledge inherent in their elective science subjects to an audience of more than 800 people. Thanks to all the science staff for organising such a great event.

Entry for 2024

Again, instead of a face-to-face open night for prospective parents we ran a YouTube live session last week from our studio for those interested in enrolling for 2024. A recording of this session has been made and has been uploaded onto YouTube.

Registration for the Year 10 entry test closes on June 2nd if you need to remind family or friends to register.

Andrew Chisholm

Assistant Principal