Assistant 

Principal Report 

Principals’ Conference

Last Tuesday I attended the Term 3 Principals Conference in Hamilton. These conferences provide the opportunity to collaborate and share with other principals as well as ongoing professional learning. The day also provided an update on current Department initiatives from the Area Education Director - Susanne Camm. Dr Ryan Dunn outlined the key elements that lead to school improvement and presented practical applications of ‘strategic enablers for implementation’ advocated by the department. Our Leadership team will work through Simon Breakspear’s ‘school impact model’ and continue to identify areas for growth.

Attendance Policy

Our school policies are available on our website, but I thought it would be timely to put our Attendance Policy front and centre for our school community as we continue to strive for 100%. 

Schooling is compulsory for children and young people aged from 6 to 17 years (unless an exemption from attendance or enrolment has been granted).

Daily attendance is important for all children and young people to succeed in education and to ensure they do not fall behind both socially and developmentally. School participation maximises life opportunities for children and young people by providing them with education and support networks.

School helps people to develop important skills, knowledge and values that set them up for further learning and participation in their community.

Students are expected to attend Edenhope College during normal school hours every day of each term unless:

• there is an approved exemption from school attendance for the student
• the student has a dual enrolment with another school and has only a partial enrolment in Edenhope College, or
• the student is registered for home schooling and has only a partial enrolment in Edenhope College for particular activities.

Both schools and parents have an important role to play in supporting students to attend school every day.

Edenhope College believes all students should attend school all day, every day when the school is open for instruction and is committed to working with its school community to encourage and support full school attendance.

Our school will identify individual students or cohorts who are vulnerable and whose attendance is at risk and/or declining and will work with these students and their parents to improve their attendance through a range of interventions and supports.

Parents will communicate with the relevant staff at Edenhope College about any issues affecting their child’s attendance and work in partnership with the school to address any concerns.

Parents will provide a reasonable explanation for their child’s absence from school and endeavour to schedule family holidays, appointments and other activities outside of school hours.

Please feel free to call me if you have any concerns. 

Experiential Learning (XP) Update

On Friday August 4th, our XP team headed to Mount Arapiles in truly wintry conditions. Our focus for the day was on resilience, supporting one another and understanding the land. One of the great opportunities XP brings to the students, is looking at elements of their curriculum in real life situations. Recently, in humanities, students have been studying landforms and contour lines, which we were able to unpack through map reading exercises based on our Mount Arapiles walk. After Oscar Dunstan took us through an acknowledgement of country we began our journey from the picturesque Natimuk Golf Club to begin a 16km circumnavigation of Mount Arapiles as well as a climb to the top. The students worked very well together and supported each other to get through. It did take a bit longer than anticipated and did make for a tight arrival back for buses. 

This coming Friday, August 18th, we will be working and touring locally. In the morning we will be assisting Tess Caldow from the Lake Wallace homestead to plant 450 native trees before making our way to the Bourne property where we will be taken on a native wild flower hike with David. We will also be joined by David’s mother and Jess Sambell who will help teach the students about the abundant wild flowers and orchards. There is also an opportunity to sample David’s homemade sausages! 

Sport and Recreation 

Our Year 12 Sport and Recreation students have been required to develop a series of 5 Programs consisting of two sessions each based on sport and outdoor pursuits. Our boys took this as an opportunity to make use of the Lake, to teach some students new skills and of course, to feed the entire Year 12 cohort. Braithan and Dash taught their peers from Year 12 and Year 11 some simple yet effective fishing techniques, knot tying, types of baits and lures and they identified potential hazards when handling fish. The second part of the lesson, was fishing off the pier. The conditions were not terribly pleasant; I think Luke Braithwaite nearly froze; but the students pushed through and managed to snag a few tasty Redfin. Fortunately, a few younger students took up fishing after school and were able to add a few more fish to the total. The final task for the students was to cook and feed their peers. There was a lot of fish and none of it lasted! 

Chad Frost

Assistant Principal