Stephen Watt

Stephen.Watt@education.wa.edu.au

Dear Families and College Community

This is our final week of normal office operations and with the exception of Farm operations to care for livestock and maintain the property, the College will be closed until the last week in January.

Annual Review and Planning

This week staff have been undertaking a number of annual review activities, as well as planning for 2021. My thanks to Board members Ray Gerrard and James Anderson who attended our faculty reporting where staff presented reports on the College successes, challenges and performance for 2020 and a preview of plans for 2021. The improvement model follows the cycle of plan, implement, measure, review and plan. This is a cycle that never ends because we always need to be seeking improvement.

2020 will go down as a challenging year in which we all learnt how flexible and capable we are. Despite this, our student outcomes appear to have not been affected and this is testament to the systems in place at the College, the dedication of staff and parents, and the engagement of students. We are seeing larger numbers of Year 11 students leaving at the end of this year to apprenticeships. This is a reflection of the current labour market, plus how well the individual students have impressed their prospective employer.

Future Student Numbers

We have started a system of defining the number of students the College can effectively cater for in each year group with consideration given to safety in Trades and Farm and ensuring the quality of our specialised program is maintained.

Next year we have 48 new Year 10s joining the College, 14 additional new 11s to bring the total Year 11 group to 64, and at this stage 64 Year 12s. We anticipate this new and objective cap of numbers will result in a total student population of around 170, depending on how many students leave the College over the summer holidays.

Farewell to Staff

We are saying farewell to a number of staff from the Class area and I thank them for their valuable contribution to our College and students.

Lee Kraeter - moving back to the primary school sector to pursue leadership opportunities.
Nic Harger - moving out of education and pursuing other interests.
Margaret Pfitzner - retiring after over 50 years of dedicated contribution to education.
Mike Spragg - returning to full time retirement.

In their place we are employing two new teachers of Agriculture, a new English and a new Math teacher, which we will introduce to the College community next year.

In closing, can I thank each and every one of our College community; parents, carers, staff, students, Agricultural Advisory members, Trades Advisory members, College Board members, contractors and supporters for their support this year. Without everyone’s positive and active commitment to the College it would not be as successful as it is.

Enjoy the Christmas and New Year period and stay safe so we can see you all back for 2021.

Have a great weekend.

Steve

HARVEY AG WEEKLY WRAP-UP

"Excellence and Innovation in Agricultural Education"

Issue 18 · 18 Dec 2020

In this issue