From the Principal

Meliora Sequamur Awards

We celebrated a wonderful evening at the Meliora Sequamur Awards - for full details of the awards see the article in this newsletter.  Again, the Hall was packed to the gills, to celebrate these (generally) quiet achievers. Contribution to the community and informal leadership, along with personal progress, was celebrated by students, staff and parents. Til Exton, Kitty Robinson and Peter Panopoulos, three of our Year 10 captains, hosted the evening. Til gave a beautiful speech about the qualities of an informal leader, and Kitty closed the evening with a moving statement about how these awards make her proud of our school, for recognising these students. I was once again moved to tears – I still think it is the most meaningful awards ceremony I have attended throughout my whole life. Pleasingly the number of recipients was up from 22 in 2019 to 39 this year. I still think in a school of our size we could have more nominees than this.  A big thank you to our student leaders and to Katie Archibald for her organisation of the event, and to Jocelyn Hill and Kate Challis for their support.

Year 12s move towards exams

Our Year 12s are now on Swot Vac, studying hard in preparation for their exams. For many, their first exam will be English on Wednesday 30 October. It has been wonderful to see many students at school during the day, making use of the Senior Study Centre and the Library, or meeting with their teachers to review practice exam papers and individual feedback. Despite formal classes having finished, teachers are available to students without an appointment in their usual class time for the week preceding their exams, and many make arrangements with students for revision and assistance outside of those times as well. We wish all of our students sitting exams the utmost success during this period. We know you have been working hard all year, and that this will pay off.

Following the conclusion of Year 12 classes, we had the Farewell Breakfast celebration last Tuesday. Students dressed up in an array of creative costumes (and rumour has it that even the Principal was spotted as the 'Cat in the Hat'). The vast majority of our students celebrated appropriately, joyously and respectfully. Unfortunately, there were a very small number of students whose ill-considered actions resulted in unsafe behaviour. The school takes any unsafe behaviour very seriously and has been working with those students and their families to implement the appropriate disciplinary processes.

Staff professional learning: planning for 2020

Last Friday our teachers and Education Support staff spent a productive, valuable day engaged in professional learning. We worked first as a whole staff looking at strategies for maintaining and enhancing professional wellbeing. This is particularly important in caring organisations such as schools: to be at our best for others, we must be at our best ourselves.

Whilst the Education Support team worked on team building and skill development in their areas, teachers dove into curriculum development for 2020, with a particular focus on:

• enhancing our Year 7 and 8 program to create greater connections, deeper learning and more opportunities for student agency, inquiry and meta-cognition
• embedding the Victorian Curriculum Capabilities of Critical and Creative Thinking, Ethical capacity, Intercultural Understanding and Personal and Social capability more explicitly and more richly into our subject areas.

It was an incredibly collaborative atmosphere and teachers made excellent links both within and across their faculties.

Course Confirmation and ESLI 2020

Many of the enriching programs, co-curricular experiences and facilities here at Northcote High School are reliant on parent financial contributions to supplement the funding provided by the Department of Education. You will shortly receive a letter regarding Parent Payments for 2020. In this letter, you may notice a change to the way in which the Essential Student Learning Items (ESLI) charge is calculated. From 2020, students in Years 9-12 will pay an ESLI reflective of the specific courses they are undertaking in their individual program. The total ESLI charge will be calculated at Course Confirmation. Methods of payment will remain the same as in previous years. Please keep an eye on your mailbox for this information: it will be sent out this week. If you do not receive it, please contact the General Office.

Fundraising - thank you for your generosity

With the year starting to draw to a close, most of our major fundraising events have concluded. These events are organised by our families, staff and students, most notably the wonderful Friends of Northcote parent group. As well as building a sense of community, the funds raised go to the various branches of the Northcote Thrive Fund, supporting student programs, facilities and participation. A big thank you to all of you who have contributed to fundraising through your time, efforts and financial support throughout the year.  A full account of school fundraising and the activities of the Northcote Thrive Fund are published each year in our annual report.

Assessment and Feedback review

Thank you to all students, parents and staff who participated in our recent Assessment, Feedback and Reporting Review, as advertised on Compass Newsfeed. We will be working with our Leadership team and broader staff on the findings and will use this as we plan for 2020 and beyond. 

In the meantime, Learning Behaviour Reports for Year 10 and 11 students have now been published on Compass. It is a good time to review this feedback with your child, and to discuss their learning strengths and areas for development. 

Parent Communication Guidelines

Northcote is a large and busy school, and it is very important to us that our partnership with you, the families at home, is a positive and productive one. Communicating in an appropriate, clear and timely fashion is one component of this. To help facilitate the most effective communication, we have worked with staff and  School Council to develop the attached Parent Communication Guidelines. Please take a moment to review these guidelines: they have been developed so that we can best help you if you have queries or concerns. They are also published on our website and on myNorthcoteHigh. One tip to keep in mind: please make appointments if you wish to meet face to face with staff. 

How do I keep up to date with happenings at school?

Staying in touch by reading this very newsletter is a great first step! Compass and myNorthcoteHigh are also used - see the infographic below for details of these platforms.

International travel

This weekend we farewell our nineteen Victorian Young Leaders to China students, who are embarking on a five-week educational and cultural adventure. The students, along with their mentor teachers Rachel Kan and Yongzhong Zhu, have been working hard to prepare for their trip. We are very proud to be part of this great program for another year, and look forward to hearing updates from the team during their trip.

Another group of students and teachers are also preparing for the Ancient Worlds trip to Greece and Rome, departing in late November. A great chance experience their History and Classical Studies learning first-hand! See further in this newsletter for an additional opportunity for students interested in the history and politics of Ancient Greece.