Principal

Welcome to families new and returning! I am pleased to report that the year has begun well with staff and students hitting the ground running! It was lovely to reconnect with past families and meet new ones during the meet and greet on Tuesday afternoon before school began. 

Year 12 celebrations

Before we get too far into 2023, I think it’s timely to reflect on the hard work of our 2022 cohort. Congratulations of course go to our graduating class, but a special mention must be made of our high achieving students. Year 12 WACE data was released at the beginning of the year and there is much to celebrate. Ella Barker and Paige Zweck achieved ATAR scores above 80. We received Certificates of Merit  from SCSA for consistently achieving high academic results across Year 11 and Year 12. Congratulations to Zoe Skinner, Jorja Robbins and Ella Barker. These results don’t happen in isolation and in a school such as ours, many staff, not just teachers, support our student’s learning. 

I believe it’s important to celebrate success but it’s also important that we continue to improve. We do this by reflecting on our work from the past. Teaching staff will spend the next few weeks analysing our data to continually improve student outcomes. 

Business Plan

The College Business Plan is finalised and is now in place until 2025. A lot of feedback was sought from staff during the reflection process of the past plan, and it was clear that staff wanted a document that was easy to read and use. We have three priorities: 

• Quality teaching and training
• Safe and supportive environment, and 
• Partnerships 

We have targets and strategies contained within each of these priorities and over the next three years we will work as an entire school to achieve those goals. The Business Plan is led by our mission and vision. 

• Our mission: We provide a place that allows our young people to thrive. 
• Our vision: Plant, Grow, Harvest through excellence and innovation in agriculture. 

Student values have been reduced from five to three: 

• Personal excellence
• Positive relationships, and 
• Social responsibility 

The next step in the plan is introducing some branding around the school, particularly in reference to our vision, priorities, and student values. We have started this, next time you are in the front office, I encourage you to look up! Now that the College plan has been completed, Kevin Marshall and I will lead work on writing a new College Farm plan.

Staffing

We have new staff beginning this year, some are replacing staff on leave and others are filling newly created positions. 

• Stuart Irwin is on 12 months leave, replaced by Brenton Stone
• Toby Le Forte and Andrew Milne are in residence
• Tamara Cybula, Courtenay Lockyer and Tracy Hardiman have all secured office positions
• Emily Pagan has been employed as an Equine trainer 
• Belinda Dufall is employed as a Beekeeper 
• Shiralee Goodwill has returned to the College to teach English and HaSS after 12 months leave
• New positions of Design & Technology trades assistant and Laboratory Technician have been created to support Trades and Biology classes: Holly Pepper and Erik Christiensen have been appointed. 
• Sue Ryan joins us this term covering for Sarah Johnson who is on leave
• John Cosby has been appointed as a Technical Officer in Viticulture 
• Steve Swallow remains on leave and we are currently advertising for a Deputy Principal
• We are also advertising for a new Cleaner in Charge and Head Chef 
• Kevin Osborne retired in the last week of term last year. The permanent principal position was advertised and closed on the 9 February 2023. I’m confident the school community will be advised of an outcome before the end of the term.

Timetable

We are working on a new timetable this year. This is already creating student opportunities we haven’t had previously. Early reports are that the changes are positive, provide better balance, choice and flexibility for students. My immense thanks go to Mark Boynton, our Program Coordinator of Teaching and Learning, and Alf Mungioli, our Deputy Principal, for leading this important work for our students.