Exciting Changes for 2020 – Secondary School, Harrisdale
At Carey, we are committed to providing access to exceptional educational opportunities for all of our students. We deeply value the trust you bestow upon us to provide a strong values-based education, underpinned by leading academic and pastoral care programs. To ensure we continue to meet community expectations, College leadership has conducted a thorough review of our programing and timetable to ensure we continue to reflect educational best practice and our own pastoral and educational goals. This process has involved surveying our staff, families and our community, visiting other colleges and seeking expert feedback on our systems and programs to ascertain areas for development and improvement in 2020. This process is ongoing and will involve a number of positive changes for 2020.
Firstly, we are excited to announce that in 2020 the Secondary School will launch an integrated Pastoral Care and House system, along with a new day structure.
We believe the implementation of an integrated Pastoral Care and House system will better empower students to find a place of belonging and foster a competitive spirit underpinned by a communal ethos within the College. The implementation of a new day structure provides a number of opportunities, including:
- Common session lengths with consistent start and finish times every day for all classes and breaks, including transition time between sessions.
- Common lunchtimes will also enable us to provide a lunch delivery service, which will commence in 2020, initially on selected days.
- Two additional teaching and learning sessions per week. This enables students to engage in additional electives, the STEM program and to participate in a supervised homework session within school hours. In addition, the new day structure will increase the time allocated to SAS for Year 11 and 12 students, curriculum time for Year 10 students and time allocated to Middle School electives on Tuesday afternoons.
- The ability to forge distinct House identities – In 2020 our current five PCG model will be replaced by 6 Homerooms per year group and 6 Houses that meet daily. A Homeroom will double as the students House Group.
- Weekly House Days – 1 Session every Friday will be used to run weekly House competitions. To facilitate this program, students will wear their PE uniform all day Friday with their new House Shirt.*
- Increased time to run wellbeing and protective behaviours programs through Homerooms.
As a College, we are committed to seeking and providing best practice for our students and families. We believe the changes for 2020 provide an exciting new platform to holistically engage our students and staff as they journey together. Later this term and in Term 4 we will release new information regarding Homerooms and House allocations, Student Leadership opportunities and subject selection. We are deeply committed to providing an effective, safe and team-oriented learning environment for all students and look forward to continuing our journey with you.
Yours sincerely,
Mr Brenden Gifford
Principal – Secondary School
*House shirts will be available from the uniform shop late Term 4. House shirts will be required for Fridays and may be worn for all Sports classes. The current sports shirt may continue to be worn in PE classes in 2020.
2020 Day Structure:
