PRINCIPAL'S REPORT
Principals Newsletter Report September 2019
It is hard to believe our last week of term 3 has arrived. Congratulations on another busy term of learning at WHC. It been an incredibly busy last few weeks with public speaking competitions, sport, Year 7 2019 students and families treated to a welcome dinner, professional learning for staff, art gallery excursions, ski trips, subject selection and of course football finals upon us – Go the mighty Tigers!
A staff member said to me this morning that she had no idea where the year had gone and wondered how we’d already entered into September. Year 12 leaders echoed these sentiments earlier in the week as they met with me and reflected on their pending exams. 2019 certainly is flying by, but there is much left still to learn and experience at our great school – I hope that you can get involved with as much as possible into term 4.
Enjoy a fabulous safe break and take care.
Good luck Cailen
In the early hours of Thursday morning Cailen Tyler of year 11 embarked on the annual Geelong Police Youth Kokoda Project alongside 13 other Geelong students and 14 community mentors. We wish Cailen well in his endeavors representing our college and invite you to follow his progress on the Australian Kokoda Tours Facebook page. Good luck Cailen.
NAPLAN and Attitudes to School Student Survey Results
In the last few weeks we received a couple of data sets that are considered pretty important in education circles – NAPLAN and the ‘Student Attitudes to School Survey’. Regardless of what people think about the validity of national standardised testing, these results do give us an indication of how our school is travelling, whether our focus areas are bearing fruit for student wellbeing and learning and what we need to work on next.
NAPLAN testing was conducted back in May, for years 7 and 9 students. All parents should have received their students results now in the mail. Students and schools are measured on five areas of learning – Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation, Writing, Reading and Numeracy. Whilst we are proud of our year 7 results this year, we acknowledge that these achievements are largely due to the hard work that our Primary Schools put in place to support our students before they transition to Secondary School. What we are pleased with this year are improvements in our year 9 data, particularly in the growth students are exhibiting in writing and numeracy. A lot of staff work very hard in our literacy and numeracy support teams to provide learning opportunities for students regardless of their current academic abilities. I thank them all for their patience, skills, effort and enthusiasm to ensure that all students are challenged to be the best they can be.
The student attitudes to school survey was also conducted in May, for all students at our school. This survey is mandated for all government schools in Victoria and provide students with the opportunity to reflect back to the school their experiences of teaching practice in the classroom, teacher-student relations, learning disposition, social engagement, school safety and bullying. Invariably when a school focuses on one or two areas, these results improve, and everyone crosses their fingers and hope that other areas don’t decrease. At Western Heights College this year we deliberately decided to focus on attendance and providing a consistently positive learning experience in the classroom. Much more work needs to be done as there are several areas where, in comparison to other secondary schools across the state, we are behind where we’d like to be. But it is good to notice the improvements across the board and acknowledge that the initiatives we have in place are having a positive impact on students’ experience of learning at Western Heights College.
Mental Health Practitioner Initiative
I have recently been informed by the department that our school will receive an additional piece of funding for a fully qualified Mental Health Practitioner in our college for 1 and half days. This is part of a state-wide roll-out by the government to place a Mental Health Practitioner in each secondary school across the state. We will soon advertise to fill this position and will look forward to this staff member joining our school well-being team.
Maintenance Funding
Another positive announcement recently from the State government saw Western Heights College receive an increase in school maintenance funding for 2020. This well needed investment will enable the school to tackle some bigger maintenance projects over the next year and focus on enhancing our buildings and grounds and very large school precinct.
Visit from Sister School partnership in South Korea
WHC has been offered the opportunity to again partner with a South Korean school for a visit of 15-20 South Korean students in February 2020.
Western Heights has been asked to host students participating in a student exchange program run through the YMCA, Busan, South Korea. The college recognizes the value of these programs in providing cross cultural experiences for our students. This program has been approved by both the Department of Education and Training as being valuable in meeting the objectives of developing global citizens. We are expecting approximately 20 students and 3-4 teachers who will visit our school for a period of 3 weeks in early February. In order to facilitate this program, we are seeking the support of our school community by asking families to home-stay 2 students for that period. Evidence of Working with Children’s checks will need to be provided. Volunteer checks are free of charge and available through the post office. An activities program will be provided for the students on either Saturday or Sunday of each weekend for the duration of their stay. Families are not expected to participate in these activities. You would also be expected to provide 3 meals per day and families involved would receive $250 per student to support the home-stay. More information about the home-stay will be available during term 4.
WHC Specialist Basketball Program 2020
Geelong United Basketball has recently partnered with Western Heights College to develop a new specialist basketball program. This program is modeled around the successful Rowville and Maribyrnong Sports Academies in Melbourne. It appears that we will be enrolling an additional 25-30 students for this program from schools across Geelong along with some of our existing students for the commencement of 2020.
The program will be run by elite coaches and will include the following key areas:
1. Tailored Academic Package for each student to maximise potential
2. Elite coaching in basketball with the development of players individual and tactical skill set a focus
3. Strength and Conditioning to maximise the athletic potential of each individual
4. Sports Sciences - athletes will be exposed to Sports Psychology, Sport Nutrition and the other core areas to provide a well-balanced approach to training
5. Career advice and education to allow students to reach their goals and ambitions both academically and in sport.
This will be a unique program for the region and will be a wonderful opportunity for young aspiring players to develop their game