Earlier this week we had our second Prep 2023 Orientation morning at the Melton campus. It was delightful to see so many of our new students and their parents at the College. At the Parent Information Session, I spoke about “testing” and why it is important. Put simply, the College very much wants to partner with parents in the education of each and every child. A longer answer would involve a very long newsletter article; what follows is an attempt at a more detailed, but not too long response.
As a Christian College, it is our desire to engage to seek to serve the community by offering Christian education. There are many parts that this involves. We invest in teaching and learning. We look to ensure that the educational staff are given opportunities to learn about education, about how we can engage in education that is consistent with the values we espouse in our foundational documents. We, therefore, provide opportunities for staff to wrestle with how to engage with culture, including education as Christians.
We provide educational staff with opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills with respect to teaching and learning. We are involved, for example, in learning more about Visible Learning. We seek to learn from experts in this area to ensure that we are keeping focused on learning, on student learning as we engage in teaching.
We also seek to gather data from students to inform our practice. This data can be gathered through teacher observations, formative and summative testing, through completing standardised tests that are employed across the schooling sector. From time to time, we can also discuss with parents more specific tests to improve our understanding of particular children. We only do so because we believe these tests can assist us in better understanding individual students and potentially assist us in catering a program for a particular learner. So, if you are invited into a conversation about having your son or daughter being involved in, for example, a diagnostic educational test, please see such things as something to assist teaching and learning, one of the key ingredients that can help inform our College in offering Christian education.
As I finish, earlier this week I saw that our new Year 9 and 10 Classroom Building is almost complete. It looks amazing. When it is finished, I will look to get a few photos for the newsletter!