From the Principal

Welcome to the new parents joining us in 2023 and all our returning families.

This year marks the beginning of our new Business Plan. The reflections and contributions of staff, students, and the community to produce the new business plan is greatly appreciated. This new business plan is continued to be influenced by recent school reviews, student performance data, regional achievement challenges and Department of Education Focus 2023. We strive for success for Every student, Every classroom, Every day. 

Our Focus for the 2023 school year is to build on the strength of our previous business plan. At the heart of it is our commitment to ensuring all students have access to quality education. We want students to leave school with the knowledge and skills they need to participate in the workforce and contribute to society.

Our actions are driven by our vision that all students perform and progress best when their social and emotional needs are catered for and supported. We will continue to develop our programs to support this in Year 7 and Year 8. We have identified, from BMIS data and teacher feedback the need for similar support in Year 9 and Year 10. Our Student Services team will lead us in developing strategies that focus on explicitly promoting positive behaviour and pro-social interaction. There are residual challenges for us with the impact of disruption to student attendance caused by COVID. Together we will tackle this also.

We know that there is great teaching practice in our school. We owe it to all students that they benefit from the same consistency across all our classes. Collaboratively we have invested a lot of energy into a Shared Instructional Framework and description of Quality Teaching knowledge and practice. The release of the Department of Education’s Quality Teaching Strategy is timely. We won’t jump into this immediately, rather our Instructional Leadership Team will gradually lead us to re-align what we are doing with the Teaching For Impact framework.

Our recent focus on meaningful pathways for students continues. The state Government support for more profile hours, TAFE placements and the job market means that the senior school landscape will come under external factors outside our control. We are likely to see the range of pathways provide even more flexibility to students. Our school leaders will continue to pivot to ensure that our Senior School students have a wide range of options supported by our lower school career development and a focus on building external partnerships.

Student belonging is key to student attendance and success. We will continue to support staff to build an authentic culturally responsive school and classrooms and prioritise Aboriginal student health and wellbeing, engagement, and achievement.

This focus to prioritise our efforts to ensure reaching our planned goals for 2023 will benefit each student. I encourage our school community to view the new School Business Plan.

You can access the whole business plan in more detail from our website HERE.

2022 Achievement Success

Well, 2022 has been another successful year for the students at Bunbury Senior High School. The success of our Year 12 students reflects our acute understanding of the post compulsory landscape and the educational needs of young people. This ensures we have the structures in place to support their, wellbeing, and provide high quality teaching, in a range of pathways that are linked to universities and industry experience and the students’ post school pathways. 

Almost 50% of our Year 12 cohort were ATAR students.  The second highest level of ATAR engagement of any school in the greater Bunbury region. Over 17% of our ATAR students scored an ATAR of 90+. I would like to acknowledge the sustained efforts of our 90+ATAR students who have achieved academic excellence. Congratulations to Micthell Attwood, Jonah Golds, Efua Koomson, Erin Lever, Lachlan Patmore, Will Procter, Darcy Reid, Tristan Smith and Holly Van Herk.

Our ATAR students also collected a number of SCSA awards. Six students received a certificate of merit, three students received a certificate of distinction and Ethan Smith received a subject certificate of excellence.  This certificate recognises students whose exam result was in the top 0.5% in the state. What a great achievement.

Our Vocational Education students performed equally as well, with 15% of VET students receiving a Certificate IV and a further 17% receiving a Certificate III. Congratulations to Gypsy Baldwin, Maya Birmingham, Diaz Emerson, Megan Foster, Alanah Gardiner, Stacy Lungtad, Luana Margraf and Gabriel Angelo Villena on the achievement of a Certificate IV.

Also, this year we had three students accepted in WAAPA, (for Bachelor of Music - Jazz Performance - Trumpet, Composition and Music Technology and Contemporary - Drums).  Our 2022 music students were a very strong group. Congratulations to Jonah Golds, Tim Pilbeam and Kayne Richards.

Although no whole school median ATAR was produced by TISC this year our students have performed very well compared to their NAPLAN results predicted threshold. The achievement was acknowledged earlier this year by the West Australian newspaper by naming Bunbury Senior High School in the top 10 best schools in the state. We are so proud of the efforts of all our Year 12 students.

Recently in the newspaper, you will have seen much talk about the changing entrance requirements for UWA. I have no doubt that this will have a follow-on effect to other universities. For a while now Bunbury Senior High School has been talking about the “Educational Currency” that students need to be successful post compulsory schooling.

I have no doubt that the changes being proposed will present opportunities for us to create greater flexibility in senior school for students to include a greater range of achievements, both at school and in their private lives, to increase their Educational Currency. It is truly an exciting time for senior school students at Bunbury Senior High School