Principal's Message

Dear Parents/Carers,   

A key focus of our current work is to prepare for 2023.  As a college, our recent curriculum day was an opportunity to work with staff around establishing our Vision for Learning 2027.  This work aligns with our next School Strategic Plan and is designed to establish a common goal for us as a college to work towards when it comes to our strategic initiatives and actions related to learning and wellbeing.  This is the first step in our plans for a revitalised learning and wellbeing approach at Lyndhurst Secondary College.

Late last year, we started by asking the question, “What are the skills and dispositions we want our young people graduating Lyndhurst to leave us with?”.  This work helped us to establish the Graduate Profile – a series of traits that we strive to build in every single learner during their time at Lyndhurst.

The second stage of this commenced during our recent curriculum day. On this day, staff worked together to establish what the current reality looks like for learning and teaching at the college.  Student interviews filmed the week prior were shared with staff and provided valuable insight into students’ daily experiences in the classroom.  We then considered what we wanted learning to look like in five years’ time using the following prompts:

• What do we want learning to look/sound/feel like?
• What role do we want students/staff/parents and carers to play in learning?
• How do we want our learning to be described by others?

From this work, another import guiding document will be created for our college called a Learning Statement.  This establishes what kind of characteristics we value in learning. This, alongside the Graduate Profile will provide important tools for staff to design and develop new curriculum and learning experiences for our students to commence in 2023.

A summary of the Vision for 2027 is available below for further information.  This, alongside other important resources will be published on our website over the coming few months.

In addition to our focus on learning, our sub school teams guided by our Assistant Principal team, will shortly be commencing the process of updating our student engagement processes across the college.  These series of documents are critical in helping us to ensure a safe, productive and engaging learning environment for all students.  This will see us update a range of processes focused on pre-conditions for learning and other areas including, but not limited to mobile phones, uniform, classroom behaviour management, School-Wide Positive Behaviour Supports (SWPBS) and celebration assemblies.  I look forward to being able to share this work with the college community as it is redeveloped.

Alongside our establishment of a Vision for 2027 focused on learning and a review of student engagement and management practices, we are about to enter a period of school review.  This important process takes place every four years and is crucial in helping us to establish what our successes have been over this time, as well as review areas for continued focus/improvement, as well as new or emerging areas to consider.  The initial stages of this work includes a review of current policies, with our School Council playing an important role in the ratification of updated policies to ensure full compliance and effective governance.  Our review will formally commence in Term 1, 2023 with a review of our VRQA Minimum Standards to occur in Term 4, 2022.  I look forward to engaging students, staff and parents/carers with this important process to help guide the school forward.

As part of the preparation for review, we will be publishing school policies as they are updated and ratified on our school website as well as through our College newsletter.  We encourage all members of our community to read these updated policies to be aware of changes to these.

As always, whilst much of this work is focused on 2023, it is important that we continue to support our key work in 2022.  This includes working collaboratively to design, deliver and review current curriculum and support effective classroom management.  Our key mechanism for ensuring this is regular professional learning (PL) led by teams within the college.  Recent PL opportunities include a focus on literacy and numeracy strategies to support learners, collaborative planning time in learning areas focused on curriculum and PL from our sub schools focused on establishing effective entry and exit routines for classes.  I look forward to seeing this work lead to continuous improvement in our current practices for both students and staff.

Ms Eloise Haynes

Principal