Principal's Report

The Labour Day long weekend is always a welcome break part way through Term 1. However, this year, it was made even longer for the students, as the staff from our school and Mount Beauty Primary School joined to participate in the first day of the Emotional Preparedness training. With the program funded fully by the Department, as part of the Resilience and Recovery branch work, this training was suggested as a way to provide staff with another set of strategies to be able to help themselves, students and others, after periods of trauma or stress.

NAPLAN

Students in Years 7 and 9 will sit the annual NAPLAN tests, starting tomorrow on Wednesday and finishing on Monday 27th March. Our school uses the data from these to help our students’ learning, but we know it is just one piece of data that maps the whole child. The Department pays more attention though, and extra funding can be gained based on the results from these tests. If you have decided that withdrawing your child from these tests is the best for them, please make sure you have requested from school, completed and returned the signed withdrawal form.

Reporting & Conferences

Students’ Progress Reports were released at the start of Week 6 and the next round will be released at the end of Week 10, with conferences being held on Wednesday 5th April; Week 11 and the last week of the term. This is effectively a student free day, with the hours of work being moved from 1pm – 8pm. Students are strongly encouraged to attend the interviews with their families, so that they can be part of the conversation around their learning, as well as having the opportunity to be able to discuss any concerns or suggestions with their teachers directly. Booking conference times will be through Compass and will open from Friday 24th March.

Youth Crew Update

It is with a great deal of sadness that the Youth Crew partnership that has existed between Mount Beauty, Corryong and Tallangatta will be finishing up at the end of this year. For many years, the Youth Crew program was funded by Advance (through DHHS) and this funding ended last year. Other sources of funding have since been sought; however we have been unsuccessful in securing an ongoing grant. We were able to continue as normal last year, with surplus funds, but this year, the school will help support the final group of second year students to finish their program and then it will end. Although this program has been very popular in the past, recent dwindling interest, especially for students to complete the whole of the 2 year program suggest that the school may have finally outgrown the benefits of this program.

Date Reminders

Wednesday 22nd March: The first meeting of the new school council, with a special council meeting to co-opt community members prior. The special council meeting will be held at 6pm in Room 9, followed by the first school council meeting starting at 6.30pm, to elect office bearers. NB: As the special meeting generally doesn’t take half an hour, the first school council meeting usually starts at about 6.15pm. All community members are welcome to be observers of the official meeting.

Friday 17th March: National Close the Gap day: In 2006, more than 40 national organisations came together to form Close the Gap ‐ Australia’s largest ever campaign to improve the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This day is designed to raise awareness about the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Since 2006, the Close the Gap campaign has achieved an enormous amount through community support.