Ann Stratford, Principal

After five weeks of the 2018 school year, I hope everyone has settled in well, with
routines well established. By now, many students will have Common Assessment Tasks
(CATS) submitted and preparation begun for other major assessments.

We held the first General Assembly for 2018 on Thursday 15th February. There were
many highlights. Arpub Peters, a member of the Wurundjeri community conducted a
Welcome to Country to begin our year. We introduced a new tradition of welcoming our
new year 7s house by house into the assembly to some appropriately selected ‘coloured’
songs. Our Middle School Captains where introduced and inducted along with our two
new Arts Captains. We enjoyed a performance by Tianya Oliver-Peel and Aysher Dryden
and finally I had the privilege of handing out ten Principal Awards.

Staff are currently in the process of writing interim reports. These will be
available to parents/guardians to access via Compass on Friday 16th March and
parent/teacher interviews will be available for booking from this date.
Parent/Teacher interviews will take place on Thursday 22nd March. Students are
required to accompany parents/guardians to the interviews. Please take the
opportunity to discuss your child’s interim report with them prior to booking
parent/teacher interviews.

Thank you to the PTCA for supporting the College by running the annual Year 7 BBQ. I
enjoyed the opportunity to talk to our Year 7 parents with their students. Many parents
then took the opportunity to attend the ‘Compass Parent Training’. Mr Dane Keogh ran
a very informative session for parents/guardians.

I would like to encourage any parents/guardians who may have misplaced their
Compass login to contact the College. Compass is our main form of communication
with both parents/guardians and students so it is essential that parents/guardians
and students log on regularly. I also encourage parents/guardians to use their own
login and not simply use their child’s login. The login provided to parents provides
different functionality to student logins.

Our Year 7 students attended a three day camp from February 26th to 29th, at Forest
Edge Camp in Neerim East. I had the opportunity to spend Monday afternoon and
Tuesday morning with the students and staff on camp. The behaviour and level of
participation of the Year 7 students was outstanding and they are to be congratulated.
It was wonderful to see so many Year 7s making new friends, challenging themselves
and enjoying the activities provided for them. Thank you to Mr Lorkin for this
organisation of the camp and Mr Donald, Mr Nichol, Mr Carroll, Mr Van Keulen, Mr
Parr, Mr U’ren, Mr Seabook, Mr Bell, Ms Grey-Smith, Ms Rosendale, Ms Edmonds, Ms
Briggs, Mrs Whitby, Ms Meyer, Ms Bell, Ms Coghlan, Ms Crea and Mrs Van Der Ende.
who attended the camp and provided such an outstanding experience for our students.

OPEN NIGHT

A reminder that our Open Night will be held on Thursday 26th April at 7.00pm. We invite
current and new parents/guardians to come to our College and find out about the
fabulous opportunities that are available to the students who attend our College.
Students will be dismissed at 1.00pm.

Ann Stratford
Principal