Farewell to the Year 12 Students of 2015 The end of their school days for our year 12 students culminated in the Graduation Dinner at the Atrium, Flemington Racecourse on Friday 16th October. Attended by approximately 400 students,families and staff, it was, as always, a very special celebratory occasion. It was genuinely a pleasure to present the graduation certificates to the year 12 students, in acknowledgement of their achievements and successful completion of VCE or VCAL. It was also a fitting occasion to recognise the endeavour and achievements of all those students who received subject awards for excellence. Special mention must be made of Leo Palmer who received the Highest Performance Award with excellence awards in five subjects. Thanks must also go to Leo and Hayley Russ who delivered a very eloquent valedictory speech on behalf of their fellow students. The spirit of their speech very much reflected the spirit of this cohort. They have been an exceptionally cohesive and inclusive group who have worked and studied together and shown great support and care for each other. As well as being congratulated on their achievements in their studies they also deserve to be congratulated on these special qualities that have characterised their relationships with each other. As we say farewell to our year 12s, we wish each and everyone of them the very best in their futures ahead of them. Footscray Learning Precinct The October meeting of the Strategic Advisory Group for the Footscray Learning Precinct was held at Footscray City Primary last week. There was a project update from the DET representatives and they presented a Request for Proposal, which is essentially a tendering process to engage an external company/consultancy for the stated purpose of undertaking a feasibility study to inform the development of the Footscray Learning Precinct. The main areas the successful company/consultancy will be expected to deliver on include information and data gathering international and national educational research. including that related to best practice learning precincts an overview of current provision in the inner west key stakeholder interviews (includes FCC, Footscray City PS, Gilmore College, Victoria University, Maribyrnong City Council, Sky High – there will be other primary schools and organisations interviewed as well as the identified main stakeholders) feasibility criteria to enable the assessment of options for the configuration of the precinct – to include: education value and opportunities, technical matters including physical space requirements and accessibility,community value and financial, costing and other economic matters a draft feasibility report to be revised in response to qualitative and quantitative research followed by the presentation of a final report The revised timeline for this feasibility study is that the commencement will be early December with completion in early August 2016, and a brief for decision to the Minister of Education in mid-August. Sustainability Award Winners We were invited to attend the Sustainability Victoria ResourceSmart Education Awards event with repeated follow-ups to confirm that we were attending, which gave us an inkling that we may be up for an award. And we were, in fact we won two, one for Community Leadership School of the Year, and the other for Biodiversity School of the Year. A special thank you to Spencer Davis and Kieran McMahon who rose to the occasion and represented the school brilliantly with impromptu speeches of acceptance for the awards. The Year 9 Hot Docs students’ films on climate change were a major player in us gaining the Community Leadership Award. Thank you to those students for the creativity and futures thinking that went into their documentaries. Acknowledgement must also go to their teacher, Sue Dwyer who not only taught and guided the Hot Docs students through the production of their films, but has put in many voluntary hours working with the Wheelers Centre to promote her students’ work and to generally promote sustainability within the school and the wider community. It was largely the work of Jak Dunstan and his student leadership group, the Footscray Environment Society (FES) that won us the accolade for Biodiversity. Jak and his students have planted a lot of western plain tree species around the school and in tracts of land near the river. They have also been proactive in bringing about changes to improve our rubbish disposal practices and to have more eco-friendly lighting installed in our gym and other areas of the school. A very big thank you goes to Jak, Sue and all of those students who have been involved and have shown great leadership within the school around these environmental issues. (Further information about the awards event are detailed in the article below by Jak and Sue) Maria Bawden
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