Executive Team Report  

As announced yesterday by Gary Howell, our College Council President, Marianne Lee has extended her leave into term 3 and I am pleased to be able to share with you that I will be continuing in the role of Acting Principal during her absence. The Executive Team will continue unchanged with Mary Eade and Conor Sheehan as our Assistant Principals and Stace Kerr as Business Manager. We look forward to working with you and your children over the coming term as we return to the pre Covid environment and all of the opportunities that this offers.

Some of these opportunities this term included the play The Election and the two winter music concerts. We have so many talented students, the three evenings were a true delight and showcased not only the ability of our students, but also their commitment to hard work. The Election was a very professional and amazingly well-timed event, the not so subtle dig at the Australian political scene was appreciated by the audience. Sadly, Peter Hodkinson has indicated that he will be stepping away from his role as Director of the annual play after seven highly successful productions. We have been incredibly fortunate to have Peter running these events each year (except 2020), his creativity and passion has contributed so much to the richness of the opportunities available to our students and has helped to develop long standing associations with the college for many of our alumni.

Our last winter music concert was in 2019, but the team have not missed a beat and they returned with vengeance this year, we had not one but two concerts. I was so impressed by the growth of our senior students over the two years despite the on-line nature of the lessons for much of the time. It was also reassuring to see so many of our younger students involved on the second night, it was a very full house. 

Adding to this, the team working on “The Sound of Music” are putting in long hours in preparation for opening night on Thursday 21 July. The small snippets I have seen so far indicate we are in for a truly spectacular show.

The college has continued its review into the senior school certificate reforms and the current offerings of vocational education opportunities to our students. Early in term 3 we will be communicating with our community the broad changes that have been made to senior certificates and the VCE for 2023. During the Year 10 Subject Selection evening in early term 3 there will be specific details about the new applied learning program at Koonung. We can confirm that the VCE Vocational Major (VM) will be offered at Koonung for Year 11 2023 students. There will be an application process that covers a student’s ability to complete 3 parts: VCE subjects, VET/TAFE programs and industry employment. We will also be providing the Victorian Pathways Certificate (VPC) which will be delivered alongside the VCE VM to identified students. I would like to acknowledge the immense amount of work undertaken by Conor Sheehan to plan both the staffing, delivery and structure of this program. It is a significant change in our senior school provision and we are working on a very short timeline. Course descriptions and curriculum support material only became available at the start of May and Conor and a key group of staff have been working to complete registration requirements and documentation which is required by the VRQA and VCAA by the end of July. 

Our Year 7 and 9 students completed NAPLAN this term for the first time ever in an online format and we were very pleased with how they conducted themselves. The demand for catch up sessions by families who had missed the assessments due to illness was very high and fortunately the administration of catch up tests was much easier using the online interface. The window for completion of tests was expanded in recognition of the impact of Covid on student attendance. We anticipate results will be available later in term 3.

This term our students have also completed the Attitude to School Survey which provides the school with very detailed data about how our students are feeling about their learning, their teachers and themselves. Staff will be unpacking this data early next term as we work to understand the main areas of concern as well as the areas to be celebrated. 

Yesterday marked the conclusion of the Year 10 and 11 exams. For both groups it was a tense time but yet another reminder that we are returning to ‘normal’. They have been working hard in class over the last two weeks competing practice exams and learning revision strategies. Elevate Education worked with our Year 10 students to explicitly teach revision strategies and all teachers supported students in their classes to help them to unpack a variety of study approaches which support effective revision. 

Our final event for the term was the Year 11 and 12 Formal last night. It felt like a very long time since we were last able to celebrate in this manner. The students arrived in all of their splendour with flowing gowns, immaculate suits and a real splash of colour and fun. As always our students were wonderful ambassadors of Koonung Secondary College, the grins on their faces as they left after dancing the night away brought a warm glow to the hearts of the staff who were there on a rather chilly night. On behalf of the staff and students who attended last night I would like to thank the student organising committee and Zaiga Bendrups for all of their work to bring together a great evening. 

Today staff have been finalising assessments and reporting for all year levels as we mark the end of the semester. Reports will be issued after 4 pm on Thursday 14 July. 

I would like thank all families for their support this term and wish you a safe and restful holiday. 

Sandra Greenhill 

Acting Principal