Learning & Teaching

Welcome back to 2023!

I would like to welcome all our returning staff, parents and students, along with those who are new to our College. Marian Catholic College is a place of welcome, learning, faith and wellbeing and I am sure all those new to the College have already experienced this.

As we enter the new year I am pleased to report that Marian Catholic College’s reputation as a place of learning excellence continues to grow. For the third year in a row MCC has recorded the best HSC Results in the entire Wagga Wagga Diocese and again is the best performing School from any sector in the Riverina and South West area.

These results come as no surprise to staff at the College. Over the last four years the College has enthusiastically embraced the educational research of Lyn Sharratt, targeting School, Teacher and Student Improvement and has been commended by Lyn Sharratt herself for our engagement in the program and College wide implementation. The hard work of staff in reflecting on, experimenting and improving their practice is evidenced in our outstanding results. As learning is a partnership, it is not just staff that can take the credit for such wonderful improvement. Students have embraced learning programs implemented by staff and have gradually begun to take greater ownership of their learning through self assessment and evaluation. In this learning partnership I would also like to acknowledge our parents for their support of our initiatives, and of their children as they navigate their schooling in a post-covid world.

Overall the College recorded 32 Band 6 or E4 scores and close to 150 Band 5 or E3 results. In addition to this we had 9 students receive an ATAR of 90 or above. Congratulations everyone and thank you for supporting and being proud of your own place of Secondary learning excellence in Griffith.

Of course our great results over the last 3 years does not mean that our quest for improvement will cease. Our staff and students have already enthusiastically commenced their teaching and learning over the last few weeks. Staff and students have been getting to know each other, their learning styles and abilities and beginning skills building and explicit teaching of content.

Behind the scenes there has also been a multitude of initiatives commencing. The College Growth Action Plan (GAP) Team of Staff have already met and identified potential interventions, extensions and strategies. Our Gr8 Thinking Team have begun their planning also to improve teaching and learning at the College focusing on developing staff capacity to develop rich assessment tasks and build critical thinking in students. In addition, the Literacy Team has developed a new Literacy program for Year 7 and has started analysing student data to identify potential areas of improvement.

All of these teams of staff meet in time before or after School, that is additional to their teaching load, and I thank them again for their work last year and in advance for the brilliant work they will do in 2023.

Continuing on with Professional Learning, the staff Professional Learning Teams embedded on the timetable will also return in 2023. The fortnightly sessions for staff commenced this week, with a program set out to give staff time to collaborate, research, build capacity, learn, and embed resources and activities into their teaching programs. Our focus this year is for teachers to use data and research to identify areas of improvement for students by enhancing their professional practice.

Next week is a busy week as Year 7 students will also undertake their Best Start Testing Online. The Reading and Numeracy diagnostic testing will take place on Tuesday the 14th of February (Homeroom and Period 1) and Wednesday the 15th February (Homeroom and Period 1). The remainder of the lessons on these days will remain as normal.

Best Start Online Testing is an important diagnostic tool used by the Inclusive Education team to determine future student learning adjustments, needs and extensions. Please note this is not a test that students need to study for, it is not an internal summative assessment, and does not influence the student grade.

On these days students will need to have their laptops fully charged and must bring a set of non-bluetooth headphones.

Yours in learning,

Damien Herb