Principal Report

We’re back! 

It is a glorious feeling to have a sense of normality with all of our students and staff back onsite and beginning to return to our standard routines. I want to commend all of our students who worked tirelessly through Remote Learning and who have transitioned smoothly back to onsite learning. Our staff are breathing a sigh of relief to see their students in real life and not just on a screen. It is also a fulfilling feeling to see all of our young people interacting with each other again. The current aim for the College is to return to a calm state of “business as usual” where we support students to reengage where needed and focus on learning.

Despite the school closure on Monday 18th October, we were able to farewell our 2021 Year 12 students with some COVID-safe celebrations on their final day. Thank you to those staff and students involved in this day, especially our 2021 College Captains; Rueben, Chiara, Skye and Alexis for serving the College with sincerity and dedication. We look forward to celebrating these valedictorians at a later stage of the year. I commend all of the Year 12 students on their maturity towards coming back onsite and their dedication to completing Year 12, in what has been a challenging year. The Year 12 students completing their final exams have also showed a huge level of commitment to their studies and have been exemplary role models of the College. I wish all Year 12’s the very best for your pending results. 

As we say good bye to the current Year 12 students, I am please to announce our new student leaders. Congratulations to Ruby B. and James W. who have been appointed as 2022 College Captains. It is exciting to see the extensive number of Year 11 students applying for new leadership positions that we have available next year to support the House structure. I look forward to announcing more of the leaders over the coming weeks. The leadership positions for students in Year 7-10 will become available early next year. 

Our priority is learning and it is stronger more than ever now as we spend the final few weeks before Early Commencement starts on Monday 29th November. For our Year 10 and 11 students this looks like studying and revising in preparation for the upcoming exams. For our Year 7-9 students, this may look like completing final assessments or gaining additional support where needed. 

For all students, I want to encourage prioritisation of learning social skills. Remote Learning deprived us of interacting with others in our normal ways, even just the incidental conversations and social gestures that come with everyday life. We need to be seeking opportunities to develop positive relationships again, remember the polite ways to speak to our peers and the appropriate ways to behave with others. 

As we move into Early Commencement we begin a journey into a new version of Mount Erin College. We will transition to our House structure where every student will be allocated into one of the four Houses. Students will notice little change in their day to day experience at school, but will soon be immersed into their House culture. Our four House Leadership teams have now been finalised and are as follows:

Along with the move to the vertical structure comes a small change to Home Group each morning. After consultation with students and staff, Home Group will continue to run daily at 8.30am – 8.35am, but students will now be grouped into either a Year 7-9 vertical Home Group or a Year 10-12 vertical Home Group (each homegroup remaining at a maximum of 25 students). Students are looking forward to the opportunities that this will provide for them. Lockers will eventually be moved into House areas, where acting on feedback from senior students, Year 12 students will have their lockers in a slightly separate area to the other students in their House. A study space will still remain for our Senior students to afford them a quiet place to focus on their studies.

It is a very exciting time to be part of the evolution of Mount Erin College and I am pleased that you are all with me on this journey. Once we have our House structure in place, we will turn our attention next to enhancing the learning opportunities for all students and individualising learning. 

Thank you MEC community for your continued support.

Jenni Hodgins

Principal