Principal's Report

Thank You and Well Done.

“We are on this journey together, we will make mistakes together, we will have wonderful victories together, we will celebrate many successes together, we will carry each other through difficult times together and at the end of this journey we will celebrate all that is good with joy and gratitude together.”

I would like to express how much I appreciate working with our Leadership Team and staff here at St. Joseph’s during times like this. Their professionalism, flexibility and calmness under the circumstances is very commendable. There is an enormous amount of goodwill and a clear focus on looking after everyone’s wellbeing as well as our students’ learning. Thank you to our staff.

Thank you also to our students and families. We have certainly benefitted from our previous experiences of remote learning and are finding it a smoother transition each time we must start remote learning.

Having said that, we must also acknowledge that this term has been a difficult one.

It is amazing in this last week of term 3 to reflect on what our community has achieved together over the last 10 weeks. We have been in out of remote learning a couple of times, and COVID has certainly taken up more of our time than we would like it to. It has also created difficulties and barriers to our normal day-to-day life and the ability of students and staff to settle into a good learning, teaching and study routines.

Despite this it is amazing what we have achieved together. The recently completed reports indicate that most students are progressing well and are remaining committed to their studies. Recently released NAPLAN results were very pleasing as well. They indicated that our student cohorts had achieved more than the expected growth in the timeframe between tests and across all areas of testing.

Our Year 12 students are displaying remarkable resilience as they approach the end of their second year of disrupted learning and their upcoming final assessments. We congratulate them and wish them all the best for the few short weeks they have left with us before exams start at the end of October.

In amongst all that our planning for the second campus has also proceeded very well. Over the holiday break we expect to be appointing the successful tenderer and will be hoping that there will be workers on site early next term. It will be exciting to finally see the project start to take shape.

In preparation for the registration of the new campus a Campus Naming committee has been formed to coordinate a process of discernment for the two campuses to be named, other than being known by their street addresses.

To help us in this process, we are calling for submissions from community members to name each of the campuses.

Names chosen may reflect the contribution of a significant person or group, a geographical location (current or historical) or a name associated with the indigenous people of the area. The name(s) chosen should always reflect the Vision, Mission and Values of St. Joseph’s College and Kildare Ministries and our Catholic Identity.

Submission must be:

in writing and include a rationale for the names proposed for each of the campuses.
no more than 4 x A4 pages
submitted by email to principal@sje.vic.edu.au
received by the close of business Friday 15 October.

For more information about the submission criteria and guidelines, please refer to our website https://www.sje.vic.edu.au/future-planning/

In conclusion, I’d like to commend staff students and families for the cooperative way that they have worked together throughout this term to get us safely to the end of it. I would also commend everyone for the way in which we have kept going in the face of lockdowns, anxiety, and uncertainty.

I firmly believe that it has been our togetherness and commitment to each other that has gotten us to this point.

Thank you one and all. Enjoy a restful and relaxing holiday break.

God bless.

Michael Delaney

Principal