This week’s Gospel from Luke (19: 1-10) tells the story where a tax collector, Zacchaeus, climbed a tree to witness Jesus passing by. When Jesus saw him, He called him down and told him that He would share a meal at Zacchaeus’ house that day. Many of the people watching were upset that Jesus had decided to spend time with a sinner and an outcast. In response to this, Zacchaeus decided to give away half of his property to the poor and give four times what he had stolen back to anyone who he had cheated. Jesus used this to explain that it is not too late for people to repent and reach salvation. This salvation is freely given to anyone who genuinely repents and looks to make amends. Genuine sorrow is essential for this process to be fulfilled and whilst this repentance may only ever be known by God, the actions of a sorrowful person may help to ease the burden of others on earth. Zacchaeus realised Jesus had a full and meaningful love for him even though he had done wrong but was wise enough to know that he had the responsibility to mend the relationship since Jesus’ love was unconditional.

Earlier this week, our Key Learning Area (KLA) Coordinators spent a day reviewing and discussing our School Improvement Plan for the next four years. This plan will be built on several data sources that we have used over the past few years to reflect on what we do well as a community and what we might focus on for improvement. We have used information from our Cyclic Review report from earlier this year as well as data from the Tell Them From Me survey and a number of Pivot surveys conducted with students. As well as these, we use the HSC data analysis and NAPLAN feedback as well as anecdotal feedback from parents and staff. This is reviewed using the National School Improvement Tool which was developed by the Queensland Department of Education and the Australian Council for Educational Research. All this information helps us to build a context for improvement and this formed the basis of our College Leadership Planning Day held late last term.

The result of this review is that we will be broadly focussing on three main areas over the next four years. Whilst we are performing well in many areas, our focus for improvement will specifically be; building relationships to enhance a sense of belonging, building teacher capacity and improving student learning growth. The process over the next few months will be to build specific strategies and indicators to help us determine our success in these areas. As I have said in previous newsletters, our aim will be to keep the community informed as we develop strategies and reflect on our progress.

Our next P&F meeting will be on Tuesday Nov 8 (week 5). Prior to the meeting starting, parents will have the opportunity to attend a Parent Literacy Evening run by Mrs Murphy, our Literacy Instructional Coach. Mrs Murphy has run a number of these evenings this year and the parents who have attended have found them valuable and interesting. Those choosing to stay can then attend the P&F if you would like. The P&F have generously offered to provide some pizza for those attending the meeting. I encourage parents to attend our last meeting for the year where we will outline the building project.