Acting Principal's Report
Staffing News
Jason Coningsby, our Principal will again be acting as the Senior Education Improvement Leader (SEIL) for Hume for 2020. It continues to be a great credit to Jason and the leadership team here at Concord that the DET are requesting his support at a system level.
In his absence, I will be continuing in the Acting Principal role, Sam Birrell will continue in the role of Acting Assistant Principal (Teaching and Learning) and Jane Black will continue in the Secondary 9/10 Team Leader role.
We all continue to work to ensure Concord provides outstanding educational opportunities for our students. With a new strategic plan and the projected completion of building works, 2020 promises to be another exceptional year of learning and growth for our students.
Orientation/Transition- Bundoora Campus Only
A reminder that we have our orientation day on the 10th of December. This day allows us to give students additional time to transition into their new classrooms in readiness for 2020 and also gives families an opportunity to meet key staff and get to know a few other parents and families. This is especially important as many of our students use the bus service to get to and from school and the opportunity to socialise during drop off and pick up is not available as a result.
The program for the day is as follows:
9:30am All new parents/carers and their children meet in the Discovery Centre.
The students will then be escorted to the classroom they will be in next year. Where possible, the students will work with the teacher and students they will be with in 2020. Please provide them a snack, lunch and drink bottle for the day. Kirrily Lamers, Colin Simpson and Sam Birrell will then address all parents/carers.
9:45am The Section Team Leader will then be available to chat to the parents/carers of the children who will be in their section in 2020 and answer any questions related to the beiginning of the school year. This will also be an opportunity for you to meet and mingle with other parents/carers in your child’s section.
The morning session for parents/carers will conclude at approximately 10:30am and we request that you return to pick your child up at 2:00pm from the main office.
Reporting Student Progress 2020
As you know we undertook various surveys of our parent community in 2019. Reporting student progress was one of the areas we were looking at and we have taken feedback onboard to improve our practice for 2020.
The changes will commence in Term 1 with our new ‘Meet the Teacher’ format. On Wednesday 5th of February we will hold an Information Evening for all Prep to Year 10 families. VCAL will hold various other sessions throughout the year. Parents and carers are invited to attend a meeting in their childs section where information about all curricular areas, camps, excursions, routines and structures will be discussed. There will be time for questions and parents will get a chance to meet all of the teachers working in their section of the school. We will then hold a separate Meet the Teacher afternoon/night on Tuesday the 18th of February. This will give parents and carers the opportunity to meet one on one with their Childs classroom teacher and help the teacher to get to know their child. We are excited by the prospect of improved communication and this is our first step to improving this process. Stay tuned as we begin to implement changes that we hope will support our students to ‘be the best they can be’.
International Day of People with Disability
In 2019, the Government is supporting a range of national programs and award schemes to celebrate International Day of People with Disability and raise the profile of disability in Australia. This year the date of the celebration falls on December 3rd.
By supporting these programs, we aim to diversify audiences and promote the achievements of people with disability more widely.
Australians celebrate the 4.3 million Australians living with disability through local celebrations in schools, workplaces and community groups. If you would like to know more about the celebrations please visit https://www.idpwd.com.au/events/calendar/?filter=Filter&ppp=20&state=vic
Kirrily Lamers
Acting Principal