The end of the year is fast approaching with only a few days left for the 2023 school year. We have already said farewell to our Year 12 students who had their final day in Week 2, which included the Year 12 breakfast and farewell assembly. This was followed by their final examinations. They celebrated their completion of their final year of school at the annual Year 12 Graduation Ceremony, which took place on Friday 24 November at the Adelaide Town Hall, which was a wonderful evening. All Year 11 students finished at the end of Week 6 when they completed their orientation program, starting their Year 12 subjects for 2024. Year 10 students finished at the end of Week 7 following their exams. Our Year 7-9 students will finish school on Friday 15 December (Week 9) with an early closure at 2:30pm. Time is certainly moving quickly.
The 2023 Course Counselling Process is now complete, and the new timetable has been built for 2024. All students, including our new Year 7 students should have now received their Semester 1 timetable via email. If students wish to make any final changes to their course selection, they are encouraged to contact our Timetabler before the end of the year to make an appointment time to change subjects.
This year we have continued our whole school curriculum review following the release of the Version 9 Australian Curriculum. Learning Area teams have met once a term to review their current curriculum, update their curriculum mapping, improve their task design and moderate samples of student work. This is improving curriculum coherence and continually improving the tasks that students complete to show what they know, understand and do. In 2024, the Chief Executive of the Department would like all public schools to begin implementing a South Australian version of the Australian Curriculum. Due to this commitment, we will continue to support curriculum review days throughout 2024 to ensure students are receiving their curriculum entitlement with the new curriculum.
The Assessment Committee and the Reporting Committee met throughout 2023 to review, improve, and innovate the way in which we assess and report across the school. At the beginning of 2024, the Assessment Committee will release guidelines for the effective us of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for assessment. This will help students, staff and families understand how generative AI can be used to support them in their assessment tasks. It also outlines how AI shouldn’t be used. The committee will release a new task design checklist that all staff will use from the beginning of next year, supporting them to review and improve all assessment tasks, making sure they are accessible to all students and allowing them to achieve at the highest level.
The Reporting Committee have developed a timeline for the new continuous reporting model for 2024. From the beginning of next year, students will receive clear and effective feedback on their common assessment tasks throughout each term so that feedback is timely and relevant to what students are learning. This feedback will be accessible by students and families in our new Learner Management System called SEQTA. End of term reports will therefore be summary reports, sharing the students’ overall grades, GPA and attendance. The committee also reviewed the Parent/Student/Teacher Conference Day trial that was held in Term 3 to see whether the structured time was beneficial to students, staff and families. Due to the feedback regarding the impact on missing a day of curriculum and the timing of the appointments, the committee have recommended that we return to a Parent Evening in 2024 for Term 2 and Term 3. These Parent Evenings will be renamed ‘Learning Conferences’ with the intention of the conversations being focused back onto the student sharing their learning process and their goal setting with their teachers and family. The aim of the Learning Conferences is to develop a stronger partnership between teachers, students, and their families.
I would like to wish all students, staff and families a wonderful break over the summer and we look forward to welcoming them back at the end of January.
If you have any questions about the report and/or would like to speak with me about anything else, please send me an email: email@example.com
Term 4, 2023