Heard on the Hill Term 1, Week 5

Kaya, Wanju

Feedback that I have received from several staff is that the students are starting to feel comfortable and hence the happy compliance that you saw in the first couple of weeks is beginning to change. This is right on cue. Now will come the test of how well you have set your routines and boundaries. Your next test is to follow-up, follow-up, and follow-up. Please be consistent in following up your words with actions. This is part 2 for setting up for a successful year.

This morning I will be attending a Principal network meeting. This meeting is planning to endorse communication to the DoE Corporate Executive from the network schools of the impact of the union bans on the operation of the schools and request that an agreement is reached as soon as possible to minimise the impact on the good operations of our schools. 

Believe it or not, we have started preparing for the transition of our Year 10s to Year 11s. Last year close to 30 students went to Manea SC. Some to study ATAR. In some cases, courses suited their selection but in others it was just the attraction of something new, and unfortunately for those going and hoping to get a good ATAR score, the results were not as good as they could have been. There is no doubt in reviewing the data, that if you want the highest ATAR, want to study Medicine, Engineering etc, Bunbury Senior High School is the best place to complete your senior schooling.

Sharing this data with our Year 10 students, presentations by current senior school students to the Year 10 students, setting up a senior school mentoring program with recent graduates to Year 10 ATAR hopefuls, is all part of the strategy that we are looking at for this year. It is worth remembering that 14 out of 15 of our ATAR courses had scaled means above the state mean.

Recently you may have seen that some of our students have been involved in portfolio workshops at ECU. This is a fantastic collaboration set-up by Paul Reynolds. I would like to congratulate him as his hard work from last year has come to fruition. There are others also leading the charge to give our students enhanced educational currency to take forward. The real relevant educational opportunities that they are organising always involve partnerships with outside commerce industry and tertiary education. Just somethings to watch for

• Robotics Forum
• Maggie Dent – Raising Boys presentation.
• Birds of Tokyo Glenn Sarangapany visit and subsequent program to support careers in building sound scapes, music, media production, etc
• Sound and lighting engineering traineeships
• FRC and FLL robotics competitions (ECU engineering scholarships)
• Between the Lines Festival
• Market Day

I urge you all to work with your PCs, in building relationships with real world applications, for students to access more complex, real situations that engage, excite and provide high level educational currency for our students.

Have a great week.

En Avant

Mike Sinagra