schools

Students often view the transition from primary to secondary school with mixed emotions. For most, the anxiety of taking that first step from the familiar into the unknown evaporates quickly as they become used to their new surroundings and routines. But so many changes in such a short space of time can be daunting for some new students and leave them feeling unsettled. How your son responds can prove a turning point in his social and academic development.

At XXXX College our aim is to foster a strong and supportive school community that is accepting and welcoming to all. We are acutely aware of the ways in which stress can stifle new students and have built a support structure to help both pupils and parents cope with the upheaval. This structure consists of a number of programmes and processes that have been put in place to help your son feel at ease, valued and a part of the school from his very first day.

We start building a sense of belonging from day one, when we assign your son to one of our four Houses – each named after one of the founding Brothers of the school; XXXX, XXXX, XXXX and XXXX. Not only do the boys compete under these banners in the inter-house competitions, they also participate in activities, camps and retreats with other boys from their own House.  These Houses form the basis of your son’s support network during his entire time at Parade. Each has its own team of student welfare coordinators and tutor teachers, and is overseen by a House Leader who has overall responsibility for your son’s wellbeing at school.

All new students are automatically assigned to a tutor group of 24, or less, boys from the junior grades – all from the same House. The purpose is to establish a collective sense of identity and to expose the new students to a wider support and encouragement network of boys who have gone, or are going, through similar experiences. Each group is assigned a tutor teacher, who then becomes the first point of contact for your son for everything from academia to social and emotional needs while he is at the College. In order to retain a sense of continuity and to maintain trust, your son retains the same tutor for his first three years at the College.

XXXX also has other programmes and policies in place to ease your son’s transition from being one of the older pupils at primary school to one of the younger students at secondary school. It can be intimidating for year 7 boys to suddenly find themselves a small fish in a big pond once more, and so we assign each a year 12 mentor who will try and steady the waters of that first year for them.

We are also mindful that for students and their families, starting at a secondary school can illicit fears of bullying. At XXXX, we enforce a zero-tolerance approach and have a policy in place to address any and every instance of bullying. The policy is designed to provide support to the victim and to educate the bully on the consequences of his actions. This is dealt with through the existing, trusted support groups that have been created within the Houses. The safe environment of the established tutor groups can make it less confronting for students to report and seek advice on how to manage this kind of behaviour.

To us, managing the transition from primary to secondary school is all about creating a strong and supportive community across both our campuses, to ensure our students feel safe, valued and enabled to learn. The concept of an inclusive community is one of the four touchstones of the school’s strategic direction through which our long-term goals are defined.

Thanks to the changing global economy, the employment landscape in Australia is no longer the same as the one most teachers and parents grew up in. For example, in the last eight years alone, manufacturing jobs in Australia have fallen by more than 14% in what is a realignment of skills that will continue for years to come. The current prediction is that when this generation of children enter the workplace, 75% of all new jobs will rely on the skills required to learn science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

So, if the graduates of tomorrow leave school without the problem solving skills that a STEM-focused education brings, wave after wave of new workers will be entering the employment market without sufficient skill to take on the jobs that are available. Clearly that increases the chances of them being unemployed – a gloomy prospect made darker by the expected increases in population over the next thirty years and the increased competition for places that is likely to bring.

It is therefore vital that today’s students are given the right skills – right now – so they can take advantage of the opportunities that will be available when they hit the employment market at the end of their studies.

The good news for parents in Melbourne’s northern suburbs is that XXXX College has already responded to the shift in demand. The school will soon celebrate 150 years’ service to Catholic education, and with that comes the experience and culture to adapt to, and embrace, change. As education has evolved over the years, so too has the school’s approach. A new digital technologies curriculum has been fully embedded already, and the school has upgraded its facilities in order to deliver it. XXXX College can now boast more than a thousand computers across its XXXX campus and, if needed, can convert nearly every classroom into an I.T. lab.

The College is backing the curriculum changes with capital investment. In 2017, the refurbished XXXX Learning Centre was opened. It now offers a communal, multi-disciplinary approach to education. After all, what better way to teach students than a flexible, evolving space that is designed to be able to respond to education needs well into the future? Inside the impressive facility, the students work in collaboration pods and presentation areas equipped with state-of-the-art technology. It’s a way of educating that is very much aligned to the ever-wider adoption of smarter working practices by Australian business, and just one example of how XXXX College is committed to helping young men to take advantage of future opportunities.