A very warm welcome back to a new school term to all of our students and families. I trust that the recent holiday period has provided a valuable opportunity to relax, recharge and refresh in readiness for Term 4. As you would be aware from the letter sent by Mr Lo Cascio and the Director of Schools earlier this week, there have been a number of changes to the COVID-19 protocols based on our Term 3 guidelines. These changes include: 

• Students may now travel outside of their Local Government Area, as long as there is a COVID-19 Safety Plan in place at the destination venue.
• Excursions, offsite activities and camps (including overnight camps) may now take place.
• Contact representative sports are now permitted.
• Use of woodwind instruments, as well as solo and small group singing is permitted.
• Incursions by external providers essential to—or that support—the delivery of the curriculum is now permitted. This includes health and vaccinations programs as well as curriculum support providers such as music tutors and sport skills development programs.
• Orientation programs for future Year 7 students may take place. 

You can help ensure the safety of the College community by:

• Keeping your children home when they are unwell, even with very mild symptoms.
• Informing the school immediately if your child is self-isolating or undergoing testing and informing us of the result as soon as possible. 
• Following sickness with flu-like symptoms, ensuring your child is free of symptoms AND can present a negative COVID-19 test, which must be sighted by the College, before they return to school.

I also take the opportunity to remind students and parents that if a student at school was to begin to feel unwell, it is important that they report to the front office where a parent can be contacted by one of our office staff. Particularly in the current climate, it would be inappropriate for a student to ring their parent directly from a mobile device and have the parent turn up at the College unannounced. Your support in this regard is greatly appreciated. 

Finally, for parents of students in Year 7 & 8, you would be aware that due to COVID-19, the 2020 Year 7 school immunisation program was suspended at the beginning of 2020 and then resumed after June. As you may be aware, the required interval between HPV- Gardasil 9 dose 1 and dose 2 is 6 months. Therefore all Year 7 students (and Year 8 catch up students) who were awaiting immunisations will be given this opportunity early next year. There is no need for parents to take their children to the GP as a result of the program being suspended in 2020.

Mr David Cloran