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Dear families,
I just wanted to reach out to you at the beginning of the school year.
Through last year, a key focus of the school was acting on recommendations of our school review.
Some examples of the work we undertook included:
- Developing consistent responses to student behaviour, both positive and negative. The result of this work was suspensions falling by 25% overall, with those for physical abuse down over 50%. We also saw a reduction in the percentage of students relocated each day.
- A focus on wellbeing for our students. This resulted in an increase in students reporting medium and high wellbeing for school climate in the annual Student Wellbeing and Engagement Survey.
Staff began the year with this continued focus on improving wellbeing for learning and quality teaching and learning. There is always a next step in the school improvement journey and we will continue to make changes to improve the school climate, belonging and student outcomes.
As you are most likely aware, one of the changes we made over the holidays was to the toilets in the Year 7, Year 9 and Year 10 blocks. These changes were undertaken to address ongoing issues and student complaints about vandalism and hygiene issues, as well as unsocial and unsafe behaviours. Toilets are private spaces and it very difficult to monitor these issues in a way that would enable us to address these problems or hold those responsible accountable.
There was, however, already an alternative model in the Year 8 block which includes two individual toilets. Since its construction over a decade ago we have not seen the problems associated with shared bathrooms in those spaces, or had any student complaints or negative feedback. For this reason, it was decided to convert the toilets in the other blocks to this model. Each of those toilets had an ‘occupied/available’ lock on the external door to ensure privacy and three of them were also painted.
I am very sorry students and families weren’t consulted about changes to the toilet blocks. In response to the feedback received from students and parents, toilets have been restored and bathrooms returned to the shared model in three blocks and an additional temporary supply of eight portable has also been introduced to address concerns about queuing during break times. In the longer term, we will work with the Department to develop models for bathroom redesign which address the underlying issues and will engage with student representatives, capture student voice and work with the School Association to get feedback and input into these solutions.
Stuart Lord
Friday 17th February
- Swimming/House Gala Day
Monday 27th February
- Newsletter issued
Tuesday 7th and Wednesday 8th March
- School Athletics Carnival
Monday 13th March
- 8 Hour Day Public Holiday
Tuesday 14th March
- Newsletter issued
Wednesday 15th - Monday 27th March
- NAPLAN
Monday 20th March
- Meet and Greet event 3-5pm
Monday 20th - Friday 26th March
- Harmony Week
Monday 27th March
- Reclink AFL 9s
WELLBEING FOR LEARNING AT NNHS
Welcome back to the 2023 school year. It was great to see so many smiling faces coming through our school gates on Wednesday morning and I look forward to working with all students, families and the wider school community throughout this year. It was also fantastic to be able to welcome our new Year 7 class, as well as our other new students and staff members, welcome to NNHS. I have been incredibly impressed with how well our Year 7 cohort have settled in to our school and they are already demonstrating our school values of Respect, Growth, Courage and Aspiration consistently.
At NNHS we share the Department for Education, Children and Young People values of Respect, Aspiration, Courage and Growth. Each term this year we will spotlight one of those values. For Term One our focus value is Respect. This fortnight our Respect focus is on respecting our learning time by “Getting Sorted, Getting Settled and Getting Started”. All classes have been unpacking what this means and what this will look like in their MERR (My Education and Respectful Relationships) lessons. At our first whole school Assembly in Week 3 we will be celebrating one student from each home group who consistently displays our values focus, these students will be our values champions for that fortnight. I look forward to sharing our journey to embed these school values in future newsletters.
In other exciting news following TYGA Fm’s recent move we have been able to move back into those rooms here at school. We had great success last year at our Circle Street Campus, offering a range of flexible learning provisions. While we will still be using our Circle Street Campus for a range of student learning programs throughout the year we will be moving most of the Circle’s operations on site, this work will continue to be led by Mrs Nicole Reeve.
As well as our usual classroom learning programs we are also very excited to be able to host a number of events throughout the year that aim to build on our school sense of community and culture by fostering school spirit. The first of these events will be our swimming and house activities day which will be held this Friday. We look forward to sharing a report of this day in the next newsletter.
In partnership,
Ali Walker
Assistant Principal, Wellbeing For Learning
GRADE 9 PACKAGES OF LEARNING: ARCHITECTURE AND CONSTRUCTION CLASS
The Grade 9 Packages of Learning: Architecture and Construction class were challenged to build some towers in a team building challenge. Students were given 20 pages of newspaper and a roll of masking tape. In teams of five, they had to designate roles such as lead engineer who drew the design of their structure, the supervisor, consruction workers, and an apprentice who cut the tape and rolled the newspaper pages to the engineer's design. Points were awarded for team work, communication, design (including any documented changes), measuring the height and base perimeter and leftover materials. Afterwards, students reflected on their team and the project result. For future projects, teams will be mixed up to help build on strengths of others.
Term 3
Tuesday 25th July - Friday 29th September
Term 4
Monday 16th October - Thursday 21st December