Welcome to the April edition of our “newsletter", as the second term gets rapidly under way. Thank you for taking the time to connect with our school through our website, social media accounts, and via the number of parent engagement sessions that we have been offering, or that we have coming up. Events such as our LCEB launch and parent information session, inaugural Year 10 Careers and Pathways expo, and 2024 enrolment information sessions are all fantastic ways for us to connect with our community and share first-hand the work that our students and staff do in working together to learn. Thank you for being part of our community, and contributing to our ongoing school improvement agenda.
School Review
As part of our school improvement agenda, we are looking forward to welcoming the School and Region Reviews (SRR) team to our school next week as they undertake our four-yearly school review. The review will see a team of four current-or-former school principals in our school for four days (Tuesday 9th to Friday 12th May), interviewing staff, students, parents, and community partners about their experiences with our school and feedback on how our school is going. The team will then use the things that they have heard to compile a report against the National School Improvement Tool (NSIT), highlighting the commendations in our current work across each domain as well as some recommendations for the things that we might look to fine tune across the next four years of our strategic planning cycle.
The nine domains of the NSIT are:
- An explicit improvement agenda – you can learn more about our improvement agenda on the Strategic direction page of our website. Stay tuned to our socials over the coming days for some updates on how we are progressing towards this direction, too!
- Analysis and discussion of data – our Showcase Award winning CAPIP processes are central to the way that we use systematically collected achievement data to inform our work in continuously improving student outcomes.
- A culture that promotes learning – our Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) structures, led by a committee of staff and parents, is central to our efforts to create and maintain a safe, respectful, tolerant, and inclusive culture within our school.
- Targeted use of school resources – the ways in which we allocate teacher aides, teachers, school funds, and facilities improvements are all informed by our Strategic direction.
- An expert teaching team – Again, CAPIP and the processes that it supports have enabled our teaching team (including our Teacher Aides and other support staff) to become ever-more skilled in supporting student learning.
- Systematic curriculum delivery – CAPIP is once again is central to the work of our teachers in ensuring that our teaching and learning is strongly aligned to the Australian Curriculum.
- Differentiated teaching and learning – This is an ongoing area of development for us, as you would see in our Strategic direction, and something that we continue to enhance.
- Effective pedagogical practices - CAPIP is once again is central to the work of our teachers in ensuring that our teaching and learning is strongly aligned to the Australian Curriculum.
- School-community partnerships – I am proud of the central role in the Urangan community that our school plays, and of the significant partnerships with organisations such as our local primary partner schools, the Neighbourhood Centre, our LCEB, and the University of Sunshine Coast, to name but a few.
The review team will seek to speak to about 80% of our staff, a number of students, and a number of parents too. If the review team rings you, I encourage you to share your honest experiences of our school, and look forward to engaging with the feedback from the team as we continue to build the foundations of our school for the years to come.
Academic Reporting
Our Term 1 reports have all been distributed, and it has been very pleasing to see the level of achievement of the vast majority of our students. Year 7s, in particular, demand a special shout out for the high levels of achievement and effort that they have demonstrated across the board. Congratulations!
It is important to note that Term 1 results are interim only, which means that there is still time to improve on the effort to date and certainly improve on the result. I encourage all students to make use of the tutorial and other assistance sessions held weekly on Mondays and Fridays during UAchieve time (these schedules are posted Sundays and Thursdays on our Facebook page), and to actively seek feedback from their teachers in identifying what they are currently doing well but also what the next steps to turn their Cs into a B, and their Bs into an A. Similarly, parents are able to reach out to our staff via email and Compass to seek feedback on behalf of their child, and I thank our parents who consistently work productively alongside our staff in supporting student achievement.
Enrolment Update
Enrolments for 2024 are now open, and I encourage anyone who may be interested (or know someone who is interested) in joining the Urangan SHS community to engage early with our enrolment processes. Applications for our ever-popular Academic and Cultural Enhancement (ACE) program will close soon (Monday 22nd May), and a number of school tours and information sessions will be offered for our prospective students in the coming weeks. Please register your interest for any of these sessions online, or by contacting our office for further information.
As always, if our school can assist you in any way, please continue to contact us. To keep up with all of our school events and see details of student success, you can follow us on Facebook (@UranganSHS), on Compass (https://uranganshs-qld.compass.education/), on our website (https://uranganshs.eq.edu.au/), and now too on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/uranganstatehighschool/).
Many thanks
Tony McCormack
Principal