Issue 14 / 4 September 2015
Junior School Bulletin
Junior School News Student Led Conferences It was wonderful to see so many families attend the Student Led Conferences last week. It was a perfect opportunity for the children to share their learning journey. Having the students take age appropriate responsibility for their learning is an important step in getting the children to become “Life Long Learners”. We know that when students own their learning and can articulate it, they actually become better learners. We would like to say thank you to all of you who had to make adjustments to your busy schedules to come during the school day. Changes to the Tertiary Entrance Ranking System Mrs Warner (Deputy Principal/Head of Secondary) wrote to the families in Year 8 about the changes to tertiary entrance ranking system. Whilst it is a few years before your child is involved with this change, it is still important that you are aware of it. I have included her letter below for your information.
Putting Others First One of our College’s core values is Service – ‘The Spirit of Selflessness’. Service involves selfless giving and making a difference in the lives of others by identifying and responding to their needs, and carrying out that service without expecting recognition or reward. At St Andrews an ethic of service abounds which helps account for the commonplace, selfless, individual and community actions that go to enriching the lives of others. Galatians 5:13 ‘… but through love serve one another’ This has been very evident over the past fortnight where a number of students in the Junior School have approached me about hosting a stall, in order to raise money for a charity and to raise awareness. Polly Frost and Mia MacDonald raised money for the RSPCA by holding a cup cake sale. Hudson Rowe, Lily and Eliza Wilson raised awareness and money for Metabolic Errors through selling popcorn and bracelets. A large group of girls in Years 3 and 4 are hosting stalls to raise awareness and money for Breast Cancer. In a lot of these cases the causes are very personal for them and it is a way that they can honour a loved one who has been impacted.
“Recently, the Education Minister Kate Jones announced that the State Labour Government is going ahead with the tertiary entrance ranking system proposed by the former Liberal National Government which will be introduced in 2018. The new system will include a mix of internal and external exams, starting with students entering Year 11 in 2018. A move to the ATAR system was one of the recommendations of the Australian Council for Educational Research review into the state’s education system, which was carried out under the previous government. Universities have increasingly turned to ATAR as a preferred score for course entrance as it is considered more precise. While OPs scored students between 1 and 25, the ATAR scores between 99.95 and zero - the higher the number, the better the result. In Queensland, the current system, which has been in place since 1992 uses a Core Skills Test - seven hours of exams across several days, which tests a student’s knowledge across a range of subjects and their curriculums, as well as a student’s subject results across Years 11 and 12. Those students, currently in Year 8, will move into the ATAR system and will sit at least one external assessment as well as three internal assessments over the two years of their Year 11/ Year 12 subjects. This move to an ATAR system will bring Queensland in line with the system used in most other states in Australia.