Dear Parents/Carers, Families and College Community

Earlier this week we welcomed our new students to the College through a Transition program. The intent is to provide new students with an opportunity to settle into the College and our routines, as well as getting to know some of their follow students. It is also an opportunity for their parents to get used to having their child at the College and ask questions.

My thanks to our existing Year 10s who assisted the new students, but particularly the Year 11s, Samantha Cox, Josie Curtis, Paigie Fell, Ella Rendell and Celeste Whittaker who returned to help in the Transition program. It is lovely that they felt they had a role in showing the new students around.

Joining us next year we have 50 new Year 10s, 19 new Year 11s and 1 new Year 12. The Year 10 and 11 programs are full, as are all the Boarding positions. We look set for a start-up to 2022 with 170 students, as we predict about four Year 11s leaving due to apprenticeships.

Obviously as additional Year 11s leave for apprenticeships, the number of Year 12s will also drop, but we will not be replacing them with any new Year 10s or 11s.

You might be interested to know that of our 70 new students;

22% are brothers or sisters of existing or recent students.
39% are female.
They come from 38 different schools, half from private schools.

I spoke to the new parents and families about the need to maintain good communication between themselves and us, and I would like to reinforce the same with our existing families. There are many mechanisms we use to provide a range of different information. One of these we will aim to use more next year is CONNECT which will enable families to see their child’s progress on an individual assessment level.

Work Experience

Next week our Year 10s are off on work experience and I wish them well. Links with industry are critical for young people to refine their career interests and to develop new skills and understandings. Work experience is increasingly used by employers to test young people for employment and we have impressed on our students the importance of presenting themselves in a positive light.

My thanks to Amelia Raper who undertakes the majority of the tasks to get work experience organised.

Staff PD's

For the first half of next week a number of our staff are heading to Cunderdin to take part in some system wide professional learning. The opportunity to work with staff from other Colleges is invaluable to refine and improve our systems.

On Friday of next week, all staff will meet to run through our 2021 Performance and Planning for 2022. We have also invited members of the College Board to attend.

Due to everyone being busy next week we will not produce a Wrap-up, but will provide a final edition in the last week of term.

Have a great weekend

HARVEY AG WEEKLY WRAP-UP

"Excellence and Innovation in Agricultural Education"

Issue 34 · 03 Dec 2021

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