Principal 

Stephen Watt

Stephen.Watt@education.wa.edu.au

Dear Parents/Carers, Families and College community

Welcome to a new school year and my best wishes that it will be positive and productive for everyone. We have all had an interesting and challenging few weeks for a range of reasons and I hope that your personal circumstances are okay.

My thanks to our families for their flexibility and patience over the last week when we had to close the school. Thank you for those of you who sent lovely messages of support. My thanks also to our staff who worked to keep the College operating, to prepare for students returning and to prepare for learning from home. We are well placed to transition to a learning from home model should the need arise in the future.

With all that said, I was very pleased to welcome our Boarding students back to the College on Sunday and then our Day students on Monday. Our intention was to get our students into a normal routine as soon as possible and from the looks of things we have achieved this aim. 

We conducted a whole school assembly on Monday to formally welcome everyone back and reinforced some key points about standards and expectations. We also stressed how short and busy this first term is and the need for students to remain actively engaged and involved with what is going on. 

We understand that there is a lot to learn for new families and students to the College and I urge new parents/carers to keep asking questions if you have any concerns or are unclear about anything at the College. In my experience, most disagreements are caused when parties have different views about what is important. Our College Handbook is a great source of information and forms the basis of our systems and processes, and is a great place to start to understand how we operate. 

From a residential perspective, all of our Boarding students have one of the Residential staff keeping an additional eye on them. Parents/carers can expect a phone call in the next week or so with some information on their transition to boarding. 

School improvement

I am always interested in feedback from students and families, so please feel free to contact me with observations and suggestions about how we might improve the College. 

Over the course of this year there are a number of focus areas that staff are working on. These include;

• Developing our Student Services to encompass a broader well-being focus.
• Investigate alternate models to the ATAR Pathway to cater for academic students and align with university entrance.
• Plan strategies on farm to adapt to less rainfall and irrigation water.
• Introduce STEM skills on Farm via use of electronic data management.
• Develop opportunities in Residence to teach independent living skills and an appreciation of community service

Congratulations

Later this term we will publish the Annual Report which will summarise the 2020 school year and present performance data in relation to our Business Plan priorities. 

In the meantime I’d like to highlight the fantastic ATAR scores that our students achieved last year and commend the students and teachers involved. Our five ATAR students’ scores ranged from 79.95 to 91.75 with the median score of 87.25. This compares extremely well to like schools' median score of 54.3 and all public schools' median of 79.25.  Congratulations to the students and staff involved.