Dear Parents/Carers,

‘Empowering students for learning and life’

I would like to welcome everyone back to the 2020 school year. I hope that you all had an enjoyable and relaxing holiday with a chance to spend time with family and friends. I hope that you were not affected by the bushfires and that everybody stayed safe. I extend a warm welcome to the many new families beginning their time at Lyndhurst, including our incoming Year 7 families, but also those who have joined our College across Years 8 to 12.

We have many and varied opportunities for our 2020 students this year, and I encourage all of our students to take advantage of what is on offer. Throughout the school year, there will be various sporting opportunities, performing and visual art competitions, as well as academic challenges for students to participate in. And of course students from Year 7 – 12 can take on leaderships roles within the College. The student leadership positions will be advertised to the student body and students need to start thinking now about which position they would be interested in applying for. There are many varied positions that cater for everybody. Our Student Voice Leader, Ms Lauren Shaw will work closely with myself and our student leaders and our whole student body to enhance student voice and work with our students to continually improve our school and make Lyndhurst Secondary College the best it can be. In addition, our students have been and will continue to be, involved in our staff recruitment process. They provide valuable input to support us in employing the best staff for our College, both teaching staff and education support staff.

I now like to take this opportunity to welcome our 2020 Year 12 School Captains:

Nyachristmas Kuach

Jade Minton

Jarold Tagaloa-leniu

Daejanae Talo

I commend them on obtaining these very important leadership positions for 2020 and I look forward to working with them to maintain a caring and lively school environment.

After our 2014 review, we developed a vision and set of values for our College. Last year we underwent another review and have made significant progress as a College; we now have a clearer understanding of our College’s purpose. To this end we started a review of our College Values and Vision with our staff towards the end of last year. This work will continue this year with input sought from our parent community and our students. More information about this will be provided about this during term one.

Below outlines our current vision and values :

High Expectations

As I have mentioned over the last couple of years, High Expectations of all members of our school community is paramount to improving our students learning outcomes and helping them achieve the best possible pathway for their future. The more we expect of each other and of ourselves, the greater our accomplishments. In 2019, as part of our review it was clear that having high expectations was something that was spoken about by our parents, students and staff. However what was identified was a consistent understanding of what having high expectations meant. At the end of last year, staff worked together to identify what High Expectations looked like for a staff member and for a leader in our College. This year we will continue this work and seek feedback from our whole school community. We will also develop a common understanding of what High Expectations looks like for our students and our parent/carer and wider community. We believe all our students can learn and achieve great things and having a common understanding of expectations can support this. Once again our students’ have achieved significant learning growth in Literacy (Reading and Writing) and Numeracy as indicated by NAPLAN (Year 7 and 9) and On Demand Testing/Essential Assessment (Years 7 – 10); our VCAL students achieved their Senior VCAL certificates and many are now engaged in further study or employment; all of our VCE students have received offers of tertiary studies, which is a fantastic achievement and we congratulate our whole year 12 cohort. VCAA provides us with reports on how our students achieved based on their predicated GAT results; in over 71% of subjects our students achieved significantly better than predicted results, an improvement from last year’s 66% – a credit to their hard work, our staff’s high expectations and belief in our students and the continued focus we are having in supporting our students in achieving their very best. Our median study score was maintained at 27, with only 2 study sores shy of getting 28.

2020

In 2020 Lyndhurst, Secondary College will continue to expect more of our students and of ourselves, working together as a community to support our students in achieving great things. Expecting students to arrive to school and class on time, ready for learning is key to ensure success for all students. We expect our students to be in full school uniform, and our staff to dress professionally; a student dress code not only engenders pride in personal appearance, but instils recognition of students as an integral part of the Lyndhurst Secondary College community; it creates a sense of belonging. The College will continue to have high expectations of our students, not only in these areas but also with regards to attendance, work ethic, conduct and upholding the values of commitment, excellence, integrity and respect for self, others and the environment.

Our staff will be asked to challenge and expect more from each student in their class, helping them not only achieve their personal best, but to continue to strive for more.

As a school community, parents, carers, staff and students, we will work together to continue to raise expectations and improve our students’ outcomes in both their learning and wellbeing.

We have had a great start to the 2020 school year as we welcomed over 130 new Year 7 students and a number of new students across Year 8 – 12. We are getting daily enrolment enquires across all year levels and our numbers continue to grow. We had a staggered start to the school year to support our incoming Year 7 have a smooth transition to secondary school life, enjoying a barbeque on their first day as a welcome. They had the opportunity to explore the school, find their way around and make new friends, with only Year 12 students present for the whole day. Our Year 12 engaged in a Wellbeing day supporting their physical and mental wellbeing, preparing them for the year ahead. We also invited new students from Year 8 – 11 to attend the College for a half day orientation day which was a great success. They also participated in a barbeque before leaving after lunch. The rest of the school community joined the Year 7 and 12s on the Friday, starting with a welcome sub school assembly and then heading straight to classes, meeting their teachers, getting ready for a great year.

Our students met our expectations by arriving to school and to class on time, wearing their uniform with pride. We will continue to raise expectations of all our students with a particular focus on your VCE and VCAL students, challenging them to work harder, focus on their studies and work towards achieving their very best. We will work with parents, providing them with regular progress reports on their students and together we will support our young people in raising their expectations of themselves and supporting them in achieving their goals.

This year we have divided our Sub Schools into four groups:

Senior School – Year 11 & 12 led by Mr. Brannan
Middle School – Year 9 & 10 led by Ms Sampson
Year 8 – Led by Mr Aziz
Year 7 – Led by Mr Potter

We will continue to raise expectations of our students in Middle and Junior School, students, focussing on the quality and quantity of student work, including the amount of homework and study that students do. To support our students our teaching staff are continuing the next stage of their journey on our teaching and learning model, a copy of which is displayed in each classroom. In 2020 we will continue to focus on improving our students’ literacy skills as research clearly shows that this will have a positive impact on all areas of students learning ou

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