CIS Splash

With just over three weeks left of this remarkable year, we look back on the challenges we have overcome and the events on the horizon for 2021.  Our annual school year book has been sent to the printers for production, whilst our Level Six students prepare for their up coming Graduation.  Across other levels in the school, conversations about transition to the next year level will soon begin with the learners. 

In the previous newsletter, this piece outlined the commendations that the school received from the recent CIS review. These commendations highlighted all of the aspects that GWPS is doing extremely well as an organization. Whilst we were thrilled to receive these commendations as a school in recognition of all of our hard work, we also eagerly awaited the recommendations as this would allow us to put in place frameworks that would make GWPS an even better educational institution. 

A short list of these recommendations has been listed below:

1. The staff develop a definition of global citizenship and means to measure the development of students’ competencies as global citizens.
2. The School Council and Executive Team consider including an explicit statement regarding student well-being in the guiding statements aligned with the school values to emphasise and reflect the culture of care within the school that supports student health, safety and well- being.
3.  The staff build on the school’s commitment to inclusion and intercultural understanding by including a focus on indigenous cultures, especially the aboriginal culture within the Australian context.

We feel it is important to share these recommendations with our wider school community so everyone understands what we will be working on as an organization moving forward. Recommendations one and two will be addressed next year as we will aim to review our Guiding Statements.  In doing so we will liaise with all members of the school community to ensure that the revised Guiding Statements contains the perspectives of all state holders in our school.

The third recommendation regarding the increased focus on indigenous culture in our teaching and learning programs is already currently being worked on.  Over the last few weeks we have been reviewing the school’s inquiry units taught across every classroom in the school.  In this review we have taken consideration as to how the perspectives of indigenous culture can be even further embedded into the curriculum. 

As a school we continue to live by the mantra of continuous improvement.  It will be exciting to see these improvements to our school, how these actions are implemented and the benefits to the children.