Welcome back to all students and parents after a well-earned break.

It was a pleasure to read through all the Senior School reports over the holidays seeing first-hand the fantastic results many of our students achieved. I encourage all students to continue to strive to do their best in all their academic classes during this semester.

The start of Semester Two sees the year 12’s enter their final ten weeks of academic classes and our year Ten and Eleven students begin the process of selecting pathways and subjects for 2018. Please speak to your relevant Head of Year if you have any questions that relate to any of these activities at the current time.

Homework Club in the library on Tuesdays and Thursday has begun again and our ex-students will again be available each Tuesday and Thursday to assist with your child’s homework. The new roster for the tutors will be out ASAP and they will commence on Thursday 27th July.

A reminder that Tuesday 25th July is the second round of Parent/Teacher interviews and bookings can be made through the SSO system of which you received an email during the break. I encourage you to attend these interviews to have discussions with your child’s teachers about subject selections for next year for Year 10 and 11 students and a final push for our Year 12 students to get through to the end of their pathways this year.

We also look forward to the upcoming Year Eleven Retreats which have been re-designed this year to give the students a different type of Retreat experience. I am sure they will enjoy them as I know I am looking forward to attending.

Consequences of not sitting WACE examinations in 2017

Parents of students who are studying a ATAR course in year 12 2017 are reminded of the following change in 2017.

A reminder that students who are enrolled in a Year 12 ATAR course pair of units are required to sit the ATAR course examination. There are both written and practical examinations for some ATAR courses.

From 2017, students who do not sit an ATAR course examination and do not have an approved sickness/misadventure application for that course, will not have the grades for the pair of units completed in that year contribute to the calculation of the Western Australian Certificate of Education (WACE).

This means, the grades for the ATAR Year 12 course will not contribute to the:

completion of a minimum of 20 units, including 10 Year 12 units
completion of at least one pair of Year 12 units from an English course (if the ATAR Year 12 course was either English, Literature or English as an Additional Language or Dialect)
completion of one pair of Year 12 units from List A (arts/languages/social sciences) or List B (mathematics/science/technology) {depending on the list of the ATAR Year 12 course}
achievement of at least 14 C grades or higher, including at least six C grades in Year 12 units
completion of at least four Year 12 ATAR courses.

Previously, the grades for the pair of units completed in that year did not contribute to meeting the achievement standard, but they could count in the breadth and depth requirement. This is no longer the case.

Students who do not sit the ATAR course examination will not have a course mark or grade recorded on their Western Australian Statement of Student Achievement (WASSA), nor will they receive an ATAR course report.

As a consequence, a student may not meet the requirements to receive a WACE.

Year 10 student Christopher Johnstone achievements.

Chris participated in the Special Olympics Junior National Games. In the Gold Coast. Chris' results were

gold medals in 100m (Personal Best), Shotput, 4 x 100m relay (Personal Best) and Bronze medal in Long jump

Congratulations to Chris on his dedication to these sporting disciplines. He has demonstrated a wonderful commitment and spirit in this endeavour.