Our school's vision statement reads that we want to be a transformational Christian learning community. And our mission statement is to provide the highest quality, Christ-centred education that prepares and equips students for life.

In an ever-changing world, we cannot afford to keep doing what we always have, if we are to successfully enact these two statements and educate our changing students. We need to do things differently; we need to reimagine our practice to enhance the teaching and learning programs we run. Whilst we won't achieve these goals overnight, we can change for the better with continual minor tweaks. There will be many things required for us to see these goals come to fruition, and one crucial factor that will assist us in reaching these goals, is to strengthen partnerships between parents and school. By working together, it should be easier to achieve good outcomes.

Starting at the beginning of this Term, staff in Years 5 – 10 are moving to a model of continuous reporting. We hope that ongoing reporting will assist teachers in being able to connect more deeply with students and parents, by providing more frequent opportunities to be in dialogue, in regards to student learning and progress.

Traditionally, schools distribute three reports a year—an interim and two formal reports. The interim report, usually completed early in Term one, gives parents an indication of how well their child has settled into the new school year. The formal reports are conducted at the end of Term two and Term four, and contain both written comments and a grade to indicate how well the child has progressed. This model is antiquated and is not efficient enough to help today's learners. We want to provide regular and accurate feedback to our students and parents. Hopefully, this will also enable you to better support your child's progress and know how they perform in each subject area. It will also allow you to celebrate their successes and provide targeted assistance to areas of most need.

The most important aspect of this move will be staff providing feedback promptly, to both our students and parents. Teachers design effective feedback to determine a learner's level of understanding and skill development to plan the next steps towards achieving the learning intentions. Feedback is one of the most effective teaching and learning strategies, and immediately impacts learning progress. High-quality feedback is specific and ongoing. When delivered on time, John Hattie's research shows feedback has an effect size of 0.73 on learning achievement. As a school that uses the Visible Learning approach, we know that anything with an effect size over 0.40 has a positive impact on learning.

I encourage you to make sure that you regularly check SEQTA Engage, Emmanuel’s Learning Management System. If you are unsure of your login details, don't hesitate to get in touch with the School Office, and they will assist you in getting set up. Alternatively, you can also download the SEQTA Engage app via Google Play or App Store and login with the same credentials.

A short video will also be available shortly, to demonstrate how you can see student assessments and feedback through this platform. It will be communicated at a later date when it is released.

I also encourage you to discuss the feedback with your children. The feedback will be more regular and a great opportunity to discuss their progress. Sometimes the feedback will be positive, and sometimes, maybe not quite so. Learning is a journey, we are all at different stages of the trip, and we can all benefit from assistance from time to time.

Drew Roberts — Acting Principal