From the Principal

This week I attended a meeting with a range of school principals across the Campaspe Shire.  The meeting focused on the future of the Campaspe Shire and in particular, what is required to support our children and education, now, and into the future.  It was interesting to sit back and listen to the ‘gaps’ that we have in common across all sectors, whether it be Catholic, Independent, State, Primary or Secondary, our challenges seem to be very much the same.  

One of the key topics from this meeting was the impact of COVID-19.  The interesting part of this discussion was the way in which the conversation was quickly flipped when asked “how long will schools feel the negative impact of COVID-19?”.  To answer this question in a short Principal’s Report will not do this topic justice, however, I will shed some light on just some of my (and hopefully, our) thoughts on this impact.

The College has been largely praised by the community for our implementation of the COVID-19 restrictions and facilitation of remote learning in 2020.  We worked diligently to meet the needs of students, staff and families whilst fulfilling our social responsibility to provide a COVID-safe environment. 

Our College Leadership was locked in a continuous cycle of reviewing and reacting to new Operational Guidelines provided to us by Catholic Education Sandhurst, leaving little time to assess the wider impact of Coronavirus on learning in all its forms.  As restrictions were extended, so too were the priorities of our adult population.  A shift of focus from academic learning to the wellbeing of learners, especially the friendships and social experiences that school enables, became a further focus for us.

I certainly feel that we can flip the notion that COVID-19 had a negative impact on education and that we can find positives through this pandemic. Children around the world have learned new skills in lockdown.  Many children for the first time learnt how to bake, draw, paint and ride bikes, among a myriad of other forms of development that aren’t tested, tracked or traced by traditional curricula and assessments.  We should never underestimate the power of a sibling argument for developing conflict management, self-confidence and debating skills!

As the 2020 school year came to a close and our Year 12 cohort entered their final days of formal school education, we observed something of a harmonious merging between the academic and pastoral aspects of College life, as our whole community came to recognise both are equally important.

As each day comes our way in 2021, we take another step in a direction that will hopefully bring some type of normality to our College community.  As restrictions continue to ease, we have begun to look at how we may return to some of the things we perhaps once took for granted, while looking to also integrate what we now know as a result of changes forced upon us.  The College Leadership Team has commenced to discern how we can actively engage our whole community in its physical sense for the start of Term 2.  For many of us, we crave that opportunity to physically engage with one another and over the coming weeks we will make further plans to allow this to happen.   

So, looking ahead from here, Covid-19 may not always be associated with having a negative impact on schools, I hope that we might actually see a more positive educational experience for future generations as a consequence. 

Take care

Brayden Stone

Principal