High Notes, Vol 17 No 39, December 09 2016
Scholarships
I am pleased to announce that the Scholarships Committee
(comprising K. Jaggar, J. Chan and R. Gifford) has met to appraise the encouraging number of
applications for our two school scholarships. The Phillip Day Memorial Scholarship was awarded to
Alexander De Araujo (10R). Alexander will receive a voucher of credit on his school account to
the value of $1500. Congratulations, Alexander! The Sir Roden and Lady Cutler Foundation
Scholarship for 2017-18 was awarded to Nishant Suriyadeepan (10F) who receives school vouchers
for $1500 for two years. Well done, Nishant! Jack Horton (10M) was recognised by the Committee
and given an Encouragement Award of $200.
Thank you to all those boys who applied. It was certainly hard to pick a winner from among the
impressive applications. Boys in junior years are invited to apply again next year.
Collection of Reports
All boys, except those in Year 10, should have
collected their reports. Regrettably, there are still many boys who have not fulfilled their
commitments and completed their Clearance Forms and booked an appointment time to see me to
discuss their progress at school. This is an important step in our feedback loop and I insist on
speaking to boys personally. Boys can come and get their reports before or after school and at
lunch or recess on most days. There are also sheets provided for ‘Stragglers Reports’
for an hour or so on selected days. Boys just need to make an effort to comply with policy and
come and see me. Once I have had a short feedback session with each boy, his report is loaded
online against his personal file on Find a Student. Parents are urged to sort out any outstanding
issues and encourage their sons to book a time to discuss their learning before the opportunity
for this year is lost.
Weights Room
A reminder to all boys who might have weights training as a
requirement in their regime for a GPS sport. As was the case for 2016 it is proposed that
no term memberships will be offered in 2017 for the Weights Room. Boys who
restart after absences of a term in the Weights Room have to be retrained by Kurt when he should
be concentrating on adding value to the experience of existing members. Students
requiring memberships should pay $240 by February 28, 2017. No further membership
opportunities will be offered after that date.
Summer Sport Co-payments: Term 4
The rolls for summer sports and activities
have now been finalised. In many activities co-payments are levied for the season – in this
case Term 4, 2016 and Term 1, 2017. Other sports have a policy of fixing co-payments on a
term-by-term basis. In either case, invoices have now been posted. For Years 7-10 this means that
the summer invoice will be included on individual Clearance Forms. These will need to be
cleared prior to boys receiving their reports. The base co-payment for sport for a season is $152
for 2016-17, as adjusted for on costs. Higher charges are levied by individual sports as a result
of a resolution by the P & C Sub-Committee responsible for supporting that particular sport.
It would help the MICs for these sports greatly if families could pay for their sports in the
next ten days.
Why Learning a Second Language is Vital to our Global Future - R Vukovic (Australian
Teacher, February 2016)
Learning a second language improves the brain’s
cognitive processes. More than 350 languages are spoken in Australia. The number of Year 12
students studying a language has dropped from 40% in the 1960s to 12% this year. Victoria plans
to make studying a language to Year 10 compulsory by 2025. Regrettably, with no land borders as
an impetus, Australia does not seem to value speaking a second language.
Proficiency in French would take c 660 hours for an Australian but the same level would take 2500
hours in Chinese. Popularity - Japanese, Italian, Indonesian, French, German, Mandarin. Lack of
focus in teacher training and methodology because of the number of languages offered.
Professional learning is harder too. Other countries specialise in one or two second languages.
Benefits of bilingualism: Learning a second language helps you to understand and be more
efficient in your first language. You can then communicate with others in a globalised world. It
can strengthen intercultural understanding. Different people think and operate differently in
different languages. What is normal for them is different for you. It is training in appreciation
of diversity: cultural knowledge, traditions and ways of seeing the world.
In 1950 9% of the world spoke English. Now it is 5.6% It appears 59% of educators believe their
school values the importance of learning a language other than English. Also, 66% of educators
believe the languages taught in schools should reflect Australia’s multicultural
population.
For all of these cogent reasons advanced in Vukovic’s article, I exhort boys and their
parents to consider why languages study is an integral part of our curriculum. In addition, there
are lifelong advantages to be gained from taking the two compulsory years of languages study
seriously.
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal
Publications 
