The Principal's View

Dear Community,

I will start by thanking our community for their support throughout what has been a most challenging year. I have been thoroughly impressed by the respectful manner in which our students have returned to school following an extended learning from home period.

Our focus for the remainder of 2021 will be around settling students back into class based routine and engaging them in a single assessment for learning task for each course. I want to ensure that students have a clear understanding that the hard work they have done over this time period will be of benefit and reflected in their Semester 2 report. Equally, students who have struggled throughout this time will not be disadvantaged as these assessments do not focus on specific material.

Our Semester 2 report will include an A to E grade for the outcomes attached to the Assessment for Learning task. In addition, the attitudes to learning will be adjusted to allow teaching staff to reflect on the level of engagement including work completion throughout the learning from home period. Students are encouraged to return all  material from this time to allow staff an opportunity to accurately report on their efforts. 

Thank you to our parents who completed the survey relating to our communication and management of learning from home. Information relating to COVID-19 updates, messaging from the Principal and messaging from teachers all had very positive ratings.

I was also pleased to see a very even distribution of students who engaged in online learning, work package based learning and combinations of each. This confirms the success of our multimodal approach to resourcing student learning from home materials.

Additionally, the frequency, volume, and quality of work all rated positively. Understandably, the explanation of activities is always compromised when we move away from face to face instruction.

Farewell Larayne Jeffery

Larayne Jeffery will finish her stellar teaching career this week as she moves toward retirement. Larayne has been a familiar face at Mount View High School since 1988, having arrived as a 3rd year classroom teacher. Her quality and value can be evidenced by education awards in 1991 and 2008, along with promotion to Head Teacher Administration in 2006 before moving across as Head Teacher Creative and Performing Arts in 2012. In 2017, Larayne began relieving as a Deputy Principal, and she thrived in this role, leading to her securing permanency 2019 followed by an Educational Leadership award in 2020.

Larayne’s service to the students of the Cessnock Community has been exceptional and she will be missed.

Curriculum

In 2022 we will be moving to a new curriculum structure with adjusted bell times. The decision to make the associated changes was based on a number of factors relating to Department of Education Policy, NSW Education Standards Authority Policy, a review of the effectiveness of our current curriculum pattern as well as consultation with staff, students and the community. The following summarises the curriculum changes:

1. Period length will change from 60 minutes to 50 minutes
2. The number of periods in a day moves from 5 to 6.
3. The day sequence will be Period 1,2,3, 30 minute break, Period 4 and 5, 30 minute break, finishing with Period 6.
4. Roll Call / Check In will be removed. Students will commence the day in their Period 1 class where their daily attendance will be recorded and daily notices read.
5. The day will start 10 minutes later at 8.55am and conclude at the normal 3.00pm finish.
6. All students will still finish at 2.30pm on Tuesday.
7. Bus timings will not change.
8. All students will engage in a weekly structured Wellbeing lesson as a part of their timetable.
9. Year 7 sport will run at a different time to the rest of the school under a separate program.
10. Years 8,9 and 10 will continue to complete sport requirements each Thursday periods 5 and 6.
11. Senior students will have 9 lessons per cycle for each course. This means that they will see each of their teachers 9 days out of 10 in a two week cycle.
12. English, Mathematics and Science will see moderate increases in allocated teaching and learning time across Years 7, 8, 9 and 10.
13. Year 11 and 12 students will have Thursday as an early finish day when their last lesson finishes at 12.50.
14. Year 11 and 12 will benefit from an additional 21 lessons per subject spread across Year 11 and 12.

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