Principals Message 

Dhanganna, Hello, Rojbash, 

Student Voice and Achievement.

It has been very exciting to today meet our new Student Leadership Council. Our students in year 8-11 self-nominated and were endorsed by their year adviser and another teacher and then were drawn from a pool of very worthy students. 

Congratulations to our new representatives:

Year 8- Ariana Wood, Rizheen Murad, Luke Rees, Darnell Smith.

Year 9- Theodore Thompson, Matilda Reynolds.

Year 10- Matthew Myers.

Year 11- Sophia-Rose Markham, Anna Gooley, Jaylee Auld, Haval Shamo, Noel Arafat.

This group of young leaders will joining the exceptional Year 12 senior leadership team in driving student voice, governance, and advocacy in our school. 

Students have just completed the Tell Them From Me Survey. 

This survey and student participation allows us to make important changes to the way we do things at our school to better support student learning and wellbeing. In developing our model of student governance, we have sought the voice of our students over a period of time. 

There is more development to come in this area and term 3 will see a major focus on further developing our Positive Behaviour for Learning model as our universal system of learning and behavioural expectations. Our signage around the school will be installed early next term and Respect, Responsibility and Resilience will be the words we hope to hear from everyone’s mouths and the actions we see displayed by all in our community. 

It was wonderful to be able to present some gold wings badges to some stage 5 and 6 students this week at merit assemblies and even better to see our students proudly wearing their badges the next day. We encourage all our students to proudly wear their bronze, silver and gold badges to show that at ASC we value Respect, Responsibility and Resilience.

Staffing.

We had confirmation this week of 18 of our temporary teaching staff and 14 of our non-teaching staff’s permanent employment with the Department of Education. For some of these staff it means the ability to apply for a loan, to settle in Armidale and start a family and for others certainty of employment that has been temporary for up to fifteen years.

Unfortunately, this great news has not solved all our issues around staffing shortages. As I have communicated previously, we have had to make some hard decisions around collapsing classes and combining classes in study hall. The following classes have been collapsed and students from these classes will be moved to other classes. By doing this we can have a regular teacher allocated to each class. This may still be impacted by illness.

Core classes collapsed- 10.O, 9.W and 8.O 

12 Maths Advanced 3 

12CREW2 

12PDH1 - all into 12PDH2 

12Work Studies 1 - all into Work Studies 2 

11Maths Standard 2  

10CREW7 

10MAT7 

10 Earth and Environmental Science 

8Music Elective 

8Maths 4 

Please note that these class collapses do not exceed the recommended number of students per class, which is 30 students in core classes, 22 in mandatory technology classes and 24 in senior classes. Student individual timetable will be available to them on Sentral before the start of Term 3.

In Term 3 we will have some staff changes. I will be taking some extended leave in week 1 and 2 and Ms Sarah Travis (Deputy Principal will be relieving for me. Mrs Hoddinott is recovering from a recent surgery and Mr Nathan Craven will be relieving for her. Mr Tanya Williams will unfortunately be leaving us to pursue other avenues and we will be looking for a new Year 7 Year adviser to work with Mrs Kanety.  Through an internal expression of interest, we congratulate Ms Sue McLeod and Ms Nikki Munday who will share the role of Professional Experience Hub Coordinator and facilitating the Ms. Hannah Fitzpatrick has been successful in securing a permanent position at Guyra Central School. We wish both of them all the very best on the next steps of their educational journey.

It has been quite the term at ASC with so much incredible success from and for our students in sports, arts, culture, and academic pursuits. Our School Official Facebook page gives timely updates on our students’ success. 

Wishing all our staff, students and families a wonderful Winter break and time to relax and rejuvenate for an incredible term 3.