Principal's Report

Our vision at Epping Secondary College is to strive to enable and equip all young people to reach their full potential - of being curious and acquiring new knowledge and skills; of forming strong, valuable, healthy relationships; of participating in creative expression; and of building strong mental and physical wellbeing.  As we continue to learn and work throughout 2023 we will be reinforcing this message with our students and broader school community and using a number of improvement strategies, processes and procedures to help us bring our vision to life.

As we continue to build a positive school culture and climate to support this work we are focusing during Term 1 on supporting students with a positive and safe learning environment.  Our approach to School Wide Positive Behaviour Supports (SWPBS) underpins this work and is driven by our school values of Respect, Care and Resilience.  These are core values that we ask each and every student to demonstrate during the school day and as they act as a member of our school community, so this also includes when students are out on sporting events, excursions or camps.  We ask that parents have a conversation at home with their children about how these values can be demonstrated on a daily basis.

As a College we have a number of programs in place to support students to learn and understand the expected behaviours and our values.  At the other end of the scale, we have a tiered system of responses when students breach our values and expected behaviours.  When this occurs, parents can expect to be notified by year level coordinators or a member of our leadership team.  When we have to apply a response or consequence to behaviours, we aim for these to provide an opportunity for the student to learn and to move forward in a positive manner.  We ask for parental support, when we have to respond to a breach of our expected behaviours or values.

A copy of our Student Code of Behaviour is included below for your reference.

School Facilities

Over the past few years College Council has continued to invest in the ongoing development of our school facilities and with an upgrade to our Food Technology classrooms awaiting VSBA approval. We hope to have further good news in the months ahead.

Unfortunately, we have had a number of students approach us and our Student Leaders, about the state of our toilets. All of our students need to be able to access toilet facilities, be able to wash and dry their hands or simply comb their hair. Although the vast majority of students use the toilets appropriately, a small number of students damage and vandalise our toilet blocks. This damage is not accidental; its senseless and often leads to the toilet blocks being shut. All this does is impact on students, and the time and money it costs to repair the damage could go towards other things like new equipment for classes or student formals and camps. So, we ask that students stop and think about what they are doing and hopefully our toilets can remain open for all students to use.

A reminder to students that they should be using the following toilets based on their Year Level:

• Year 7/8 students only, utilise the toilets near the Technology wing
• Year 9/10 students only, utilise the toilets near the Library
• Year 11/12 students only, utilise the toilets near the Breezeway.

NAPLAN preparations

Our school preparations for NAPLAN continue. NAPLAN is the once every two years literacy and numeracy testing for all students in Australia, for our secondary school students that occurs in Year 7 and Year 9.  It is used as a measure of student progress and allows schools to target further support, along with our own internal testing and teacher judgement based on student needs.

NAPLAN will be held in the coming weeks, having been moved forward to March from its usual scheduling in May.

Our staff have been working with students and supporting them with activities that provide NAPLAN like tasks, with a particular focus for our Year 7 and 9 students on reading, writing and numeracy tasks. Parents who would like further information are welcome to contact Mr Wolter or Ms Anand for support.

Consistent Attendance – Every Lesson – Every Day 

Michael Grose has said, “When young people miss school, not only is their academic progress impeded, forcing them to catch up on missed work (which some never do), they often miss important interactions with their peers which can compound issues of social isolation and low self-esteem.” 

“One of the most important things you can do to ensure your child has a bright future is to make sure they go to school every day (and get there on time). It sounds simple and it’s true. The correlation between school attendance and children’s achievement levels is well established. The more time kids spend at school, the more likely they are to experience school success.” 

Of course, most people know this intuitively, yet school absenteeism is a problem – and much of it is parent-condoned. If a student misses an average of 12 and 15 days per school year, that adds up to a year’s lost schooling over the school-life of a child. In today’s highly competitive world, this rate of absenteeism is alarming, putting our young people at a distinct disadvantage. 

College Expectations – Uniform

It is an expectation of attending Epping Secondary College that students wear the College Council approved uniform. College leadership and Council are in the process of making changes to our uniform, led by student voice and the first step in this space is approving students to wear the sports uniform for the full day on days they have Physical Education classes.  There will be further minor changes to come, including the introduction of some new items in the future.  It is therefore important that all students wear the College uniform when at school.

I have asked the Year Level Teams to enforce a major crackdown on uniform starting next week. Students not wearing correct uniform will be provided the opportunity to wear the uniform, but continual offenders may require parent meetings, after school detentions and or further consequences.

Please make sure that if there are any issues with uniform and you need support that you contact the relevant Year Level Team who will put you in touch with our Wellbeing Team to assist you.

STOPIT service

STOPIT is a new Victoria Police text notification service enabling commuters, including school students, to report any form of inappropriate behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable, frightened or threatened on the public transport network.

How STOPIT works

The STOPIT service enables commuters to use their mobile phone to promptly, easily and discreetly report inappropriate behaviours.

To use the service, commuters simply text ‘STOPIT’ to 0499 455 455. This triggers an automated response that includes a link to where the commuter can provide more details about what’s just happened.

When people report these types of inappropriate behaviours, police can investigate and identify offenders to improve safety on public transport for everyone.

Parents and carers are encouraged to consider discussing the new service with students who travel on public transport. Students who use mobile phones outside of school hours are encouraged to save the STOPIT number in their mobile phone.

Please note, STOPIT is for reporting non-urgent incidents on public transport. Always phone 000 in an emergency.

For more information, refer to sexual and anti-social behaviour on public transport on the Victoria Police website.

Brad Moyle

College Principal