High Notes, Vol 16 No 8, March 20 2015
High Talent
It was another historic day last Saturday as both first and
second grade basketball clinched GPS premierships at an away venue creating difficult and
pressured up contexts. Both teams executed their game plans with discipline, perseverance and
passion. Congratulations to all the boys and to their coaches – Ben Hayman, Tom Neal and
Andrija Dumovic. Well done to our winners in the GP swimming carnival 3: Kalem Best 16 50m
freestyle, Leonard Mah 18+50m freestyle, Allen Guo 12-14 breaststroke 100m and James Luo, 13 50m
butterfly.
CHS Rowing - Taree
High boys rowed well to win the Schoolboy Pointscore
Trophy as usual, but were not able to retain the overall trophy won last year, due to the
superior sculling of the SGHS crews. Tim Trent won three gold medals - the U15 single scull, the
U15 double scull paired with Matthew Le and the U15 quad scull. – a great regatta for him.
High won gold medals in all the quad sculls - U15 through to Championship. Jacob Katafono
and Wesley Zhang won two golds and a silver each in the championship four, the championship eight
and the championship pair. The coxed four was won by Johnson Lin, Ricky Pachon, Jacob
Katafono, Wesley Zhang, c Alvis Leung. Jing Li and Alvis Leung won two gold medals each. Overall,
eight gold, 8 silver and 7 bronze medals were won. No medals were won in six sculling events
– an area of opportunity for the future. Thank you to Julie Blomberg, Beryl Crockford, Ken
Ambler, Mark Gainford, Kevin Eadie, Chris Watson and Hayden Schilling for helping make the
regatta work smoothly for our competitors. It was a great venue and a worthwhile experience.
The School Plan 2015-17
4. - Planning milestones
In our planning process, milestones are activities we have
scheduled to frame the implementation, achievement and impact of each of our three strategic
directions. We need a means to validate our progress towards our goals – improvement,
measures, products and practices. We believe milestones at intervals less than one term are
unrealistic in our highly complex setting where evaluative systems are already in place in each
of the four terms. The idea of simple colour coding – green, amber, red – is an
attractive means of indicating how various milestones are being met, or not.
Five steps are recommended in the process of establishing milestones. A) Identify implementation
milestones for measures, products or practices. B) Devise a monitoring process. C) Embed an
appropriate means of ongoing evaluation. D) Plan effective use of resources. E) Measure
achievement annually. In addition the DEC has some key funding initiatives, including
equity loadings and beginning teacher support , which need to be accounted for within the school
budget.
As a precursor to our planning, we need to identify what milestones we already have in place as a
feature of our current practice. For example, HSC results for the cohort and for each course are
analysed at the end of term 4 and in the first weeks of term 1 the following year. Achievement of
targets is reviewed with each Head Teacher. New targets for the school and for each course are
derived from comparisons with past performances and those of statistically similar schools.
Targets are published in the Annual School Report. This process will be replaced by an annual
self-evaluation publication.
The Governors Centre for Excellence in Education – update
The
‘project design team’ – GHD and TKD – have submitted their final
‘conceptual design’ report. The PCG have selected option 1B as the preferred design.
The project ‘Quantity Surveyor’ has costed the selected design at $10.5m. There are
two further stages in the design process – ‘schematic design’ and
‘detailed design’. Each stage incurs substantial additional costs. Each school
community has been asked to refer the next step to their governance organisations. In their last
meetings, the P & C, the SBHS School Council and the SHS Foundation have all passed
resolutions supporting the move to the next stage – schematic design’ at an estimated
cost of $200k ($100k per school). If we maintain our current rate of progress, the
‘construction commitment’ phase would begin in Q2 2016, subject to funding becoming
available from the schools.
Great Parent Support for the Early Bird Scheme
I want to thank the 615
families who showed great High Spirit in paying their complete invoices for the year by the end
of February, to earn their discount. We are grateful that a majority of parents understand what
great value for money an education at High really is. Others want to show their support though
the Monthly Giving Scheme. Given our very ambitious fundraising targets, it is heartening to see
how many of you are getting behind our vision for the future of the school. Please continue to
give generously to make the experiences for your boys even more varied and rewarding.
Instructions for accessing Tell Them From Me Survey
In the few
weeks remaining for the online survey to be active, we are asking as many boys as
possible to access and complete the anonymous research instrument Tell Them From
Me. We hope that students will take advantage of an opportunity to express their views about
different aspects of school life. Please take the questions seriously. Don’t forget an
Award Scheme point will be awarded to participants.
The site is open until Friday, April 2:
Log into the Student Portal:
- Click the “Student Survey 2015: Tell them from me” link in the Portal Services
menu
- View your survey username and password
- Click the link to access survey website at http://nsw.tellthemfromme.com
- Log in to the survey site using your survey username and password
- Click the Go button to start the survey
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal
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