Our Community, Our Future
I thank Ms Kristy Reynoldson and Ms Gwenda Burton, our Library Team, and teachers for their leadership of our Literary Festival being held this week. Literacy across the curriculum remains a vital focus at ATC and promoting a love of reading, writing, creating, listening, and sharing is a key goal for our learning culture. We look forward to a great variety of guest speakers, workshops, activities, and events.
Numerous studies show that there is a link between a lack of literacy confidence and low self-esteem among boys. Literacy skills are also not limited to the English class. They are required in every school lesson and in all parts of life.
It is well documented that boys trail girls in literacy. This is not an Australian phenomenon but a major concern amongst global educators. Many studies have been conducted highlighting this issue and have put forward ideas as to why.
It starts from an early age. Boys are more developmentally vulnerable than girls at school entry. Almost double the number of boys than girls are considered vulnerable in the area of language and cognitive skills.
At ATC we have numerous initiatives and strategies in place to address this challenge and our Literary Festival is an important one. I encourage everyone to be involved in reading, writing, and sharing with our students this week and always.
Using Data to Inform our Practice
Over the past fortnight I have enjoyed meeting with our Senior School Heads of Department and Subject Co-ordinators to discuss our Year 12 assessment data from 2020 to 2022, the first three years of the “ATAR system”.
In Year 11 and 12 there are generally eight assessment items for each ATAR subject. The first four are called FIAs (formative internal assessments) and these are built upon and mirrored in Year 12 with three internal assessments (known as IA1, 2 and 3) and concluding with an EA (external assessment) which is weighted as 50% for the year for Maths and Science subjects and 25% for all others.
Along with Ms Lara Morgan, our Dean of Learning, we are analysing learnings from our first three years (which, like all schools, has been impacted by COVID to some degree each year) and identifying trends or patterns in the data across subjects and within subjects. These conversations are then being extended to our teaching teams in looking at our internal planning, methods, assessment design and preparation for external assessment. I thank our Learning Leaders for their diligence and commitment to reflective practice and continuous growth and improvement.
This is OUR Community: Pave the Way
This week as part of this term’s theme of This is OUR Community, our Seniors are encouraging all to support several events. On Wednesday evening, we will Spectate the Debate as our Senior Debating Team take on The Southport School at Gregory Terrace with the topic of, ‘Assassinations and insurgencies should be considered a legitimate tool of foreign policy’ -quite the topic! Friday afternoon will see Brigidine and ATC Senior School students and staff come together in the SFXC for a social volleyball afternoon. College Captain, DJ Childs and his team have collaborated with the Brigidine Senior Leaders to present this opportunity for Years 10-12 to come together socially. Following this, all students are invited to Fill the Hill on Jack Bowers Oval at 5pm in support of our First XI Football Team when they play St James, our fellow Catholic school in the Edmund Rice tradition.
ATC Strategic Plan Forum
This week sees the commencement of our Strategic Plan consultation forums with student, past student, parent, and staff representatives of approximately 15 in each group being established to consult with our external facilitators.
Along with key review data collected over the past 18 months through the EREA Mission Sustainability project, EREA School Renewal, the Non-State School Accreditation process and the Australian Council of Educational Research school improvement review in which we have engaged, this consultative process over the coming weeks will be most productive in planning for our future.
Waterford Building Project
The Waterford Senior School precinct is an important one for our immediate future as we are in need of more classrooms with 95% room use at capacity across the College. We are building 14 classrooms, enough to also replace the classrooms of Nudgee Junior Hall in a longer-term master plan project (10 plus years away) where NJ Hall is demolished and replaced by a new cultural precinct. The project also includes more student bathrooms, another hospitality teaching space, various staff offices and meeting spaces and a 200-seat auditorium.
The project also includes the expansion of staff spaces which will enable all secondary school teachers located in the Edmund Rice Building to be relocated to Tipperary. This will allow the subsequent expansion of non-teaching spaces for governance, administration, finance, and meeting spaces in the ER Building.
The new Waterford building is being built during a challenging economic, labour and supply period. The project is progressing well and is being supervised by a project team of industry professionals consulting with myself, Mr David Gardiner and Mr Peter Nugent, our Business Manager on a weekly basis. At this stage, it will be completed by Easter 2024. This will require us to bring two more demountable classrooms on to site for Term One. There may be further delays depending on the tight labour and supply markets or a weather event, but the project is progressing well. Thank you to all students, staff, parents and caregivers for your ongoing co-operation and support during this project. CLICK HERE to view the walk through video.
God bless,
Chris Ryan
College Principal
