From the Principal

Dear Parents, Carers and Students

Attendance and Effort – Every Minute Counts

As part of our beginning year liturgy, four of our school leaders addressed the College community on their hopes and aspirations for 2023. These addresses by Shane, Sophie, Olivia, and Dominic were outstanding and laid the foundation for a great year. 

One aspect of the address that I was most impressed with, was their collective drive to encourage their fellow students to strive to achieve to the best of our abilities at all times and in all aspects of College life. This is a very admirable goal and certainly something that we would hope the students would have heard clearly from their leaders. 

To assist the students, achieve this goal and reach their potential, there are a few simple strategies that we can as a community employ. This first of these is by ensuring that the students attend school as much as possible. This means a few days off per year due to genuine illness – not a 9-day fortnight which accumulates to 20 days absent a year or the equivalent of 4 weeks off a year. Absences can be minimised by booking ahead and organising dental and specialised doctor’s appointments after school or during the holidays. 

Another way of achieving this goal is for the students to use the most of their time in class every day. By making a greater effort to concentrate and apply themselves in class, students can reduce the amount of time the need to spend at home revising or completing work covered during the day. 

At St Joseph’s College, we are focused on improving the educational outcomes for each of our students by being more informed about the needs of the students and planning our lessons based upon this information so that target required skills, are engaging and life related. This also has the added benefit of providing extra time for all the other activities that families are involved in.

Finally, it is vital that students are well prepared for the day having had a good night’s sleep, a nutritious breakfast and that they come to school with further nutritious food for the day and the materials they require for each class.

We look forward to working with parents/caregivers and students in building on the importance of attendance and effort throughout the year and we encourage parents/caregivers to make contact with the College at any time.

2022 NAPLAN RESULTS

Congratulations to the current St Joseph's Year 8 and 10 students and staff on their continual growth in the 2022 NAPLAN results. According to an independent analysis of newly-released 2022 NAPLAN results published in the Courier Mail, St Joseph's has achieved placing top 6 for Year 9 in Toowoomba.

Whilst it is a collaborative effort by our key leaders teaching staff, and most importantly students, it is a true reflection of the collective perseverance to strive towards the goals outlined in our strategic plan and a result which our St Joseph's College community can take pride in. We look forward to celebrating our current Year 7 and 9 students who will complete their 2023 testing in 3 weeks' time.

You can read more about our results via the Courier Mail article here: https://www.couriermail.com.au/…/566814d118fe52129e5656d8c8…

Also, please check out the ACARA My School website for more in-depth results: https://www.myschool.edu.au/

Changes to NAPLAN reporting from 2023 

The National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) provides information on how Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are performing in reading, writing, spelling, punctuation and grammar and numeracy. 

As part of the National School Reform Agreement, education ministers agreed that a proficiency standard be introduced for literacy and numeracy assessed by NAPLAN. On 10 February 2023, education ministers also agreed to change the reporting of NAPLAN results in response to the online testing transition and the move to earlier NAPLAN testing in March.

The new proficiency standard has four levels of achievement for each year level and replaces the previous 10-band structure and the national minimum standard used across the four domains. The four levels of achievement are: 

• Exceeding 

• Strong 

• Developing 

• Needs additional support.

From 2023, the individual student report (ISR) will change. The ISR will be based on the four levels of achievement. It will also continue to show the national average, the range of achievement for the middle 60% of students in each year level, and a dot placement for the student comparing their achievement against these measures. 

This new standard and its benchmarks will provide information to parents/carers and teachers about what a student can do against a challenging but reasonable standard of literacy and numeracy expected for students at the time of the tests. 

This change to reporting means that a new time series and a resetting of the measurement scale will commence in 2023, allowing the full benefit of the new online adaptive testing to be reflected in student results. Any parents who require further information and have questions regarding these changes are encouraged to contact Mr Bill Whiting (Middle School Learning Leader) or Mrs Kerrie-Anne Fellenberg (Assistant Principal Curriculum).

Student Safety

Thank you to the many parents and caregivers who continue to exercise care and caution when driving around the streets near St Joseph’s College. Unfortunately, there are still some drivers who fail to demonstrate the care needed. Please, do not stop in the middle of the street to pick up your young person and do not perform U-turns in the surrounding narrow streets. I cannot stress enough that student safety is at risk. It is fair to say that there is significant unrest amongst several of our neighbours due to the unacceptable behaviour of a small number of our parent drivers. This, in turn, reflects very poorly on the College. I remind all drivers again, please do not park across driveways or on yellow lines, do not park on the grassed islands in the middle of the street, do not stop in the middle of the street to collect your young person, and avoid U-turns. I strongly urge you to support and adhere to these simple road safety rules.

Sound Fields – Thanks Parent Engagement Network

Over the last 12 months our Parent Engagement Network, in partnership with the College, have been working towards implementing Sound Fields in each of our flexible classroom spaces. So far we have been able to install 10 Sound Fields and over the next 12 to 18 months we will achieve the goal of implementing a Sound Field in each of our flexible classroom spaces. The Sound Field system ensure teacher and student voices are heard clearly throughout the classroom and they support better learning outcomes for all of our students. We are very grateful for the support of the St Joseph's College Parent Engagement Network in implementing these systems. Pictured below is Miss Taylah Waldron using the Sound Field system as part of her normal classroom practices whilst teaching her Year 9 class.

Congratulations Tahlia

On behalf of the St Joseph's College community, I wish to congratulate our 2022 College Captain Tahlia Utz on being offered a TJ Ryan Memorial Medal and Scholarship program Merit Certificate for 2023. This is a deserving recognition of Tahlia’s commitment to her learning and studies. The award also acknowledges the important role of schools and teachers in supporting students to reach their potential and I thank Tahlia’s teachers for their efforts.

Kort Goodman - Principal - KGoodman@sjc.qld.edu.au