Principal's Reflections on 2013

What an amazing year it has been! There have been so many highlights and opportunities for our students.

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What an amazing year it has been! There have been so many highlights and opportunities for our students. These include

• The Archibox exhibition
• Model Solarcar competition
• Robotics competition
• S4 Drama performances
• Musical concerts
• Talent Quest
• Course selection on-line
• Introduction of iPads for Year 9 students
• Year 9 Citizenship Project
• Year 7 Night of Notables
• The Debutante Ball
• Year 7 SRC lunch
• Business Management Carnival
• Duke of Edinburgh activities and camps
• The S4 Fun with Food Expo, staff dinner and regular enterprises
• Senior and junior music concerts
• “Friends and fellow travellers” week
• “Eat, move, sleep” weeks
• Girls and boys days for Year 8 students

Then of course our students were also able to experience a wide variety of camps, the Year 12 Formal and Valedictory Dinner, parent nights, information evenings, VCE Expo, TAFE tasters, work experience, sports days and various competitions.

In terms of our curriculum, 2013 saw the introduction of many new S4 subjects. The interest in VET continued to grow and in 2014 our students will participate in 43 different VET subjects. I was delighted to see that 22 students participated and graduated from our Quicksmart Maths program. And it is wonderful to see that Frau Nathan has established a sister school relationship with a school in Germany.

The Naplan results for 2013 for Years 7 and 9 show that BHHS is the top performing school in Victoria and 5^th best in Australia. Our data clearly shows what an outstanding job our teachers do –

• At Year 7 the average score of our students is 2 levels above expected.
• By Year 9 the students are still 2 levels above expected, plus even more improvement.
• Our data shows that the strategies that we have put into place for students below minimum standards have been very successful.

Our VCE results again were outstanding.

Congratulations to Olivia – Dux of the school for 2013 with an incredible ATAR score of 99.10!

7 perfect scores of 50 were achieved by our students, 113 individual study scores of over 40 were also achieved. 29.5% of our students achieved an ATAR over 90 and 48% achieved an ATAR over 80.

These are outstanding results by any measure and I would like to extend hearty congratulations to all our Year 12 students.

Please remember however, that if you didn’t quite get the score you hoped for, all is not lost, there are many ways and many pathways to get into your chosen career, and you might just be on the scenic, rather than the fastest route!

So to all our exiting students I wish you much happiness and great success in the next exciting journey that you are about to embark upon!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff, who have put in an absolutely amazing effort this year – without your hard work, enthusiasm and commitment the school would not be the great place that it is!

I would like to especially thank the following teachers who will not be continuing in their leadership roles next year.  Huge thanks are extended to Ms Sally Charles for the wonderful job she has done as Year 10 Coordinator, Ms Meryl Andrews for being a very inspiring Curriculum Coordinator and Mr Max Flavell for being an excellent Maths Coordinator for many years. Thank you for the service you have provided to our school, we really appreciate all your hard work and commitment.

Sadly for the school, several valuable staff members are retiring at the end of this year.

• Mr Ian Smith is retiring after 45 years in the teaching service. He is an outstanding Maths teacher and he will be sorely missed by the students and staff. His quirky yet fascinating way of teaching Maths and his incredible mathematical talent and knowledge will certainly be missed by our students.

• Mr Barry Maloney and Mr Don Simkin are also retiring. We have been so lucky to have both Barry and Don at our school. They have been absolutely superb Integration Aides and have supported our children in so many ways.

• Ms Lydia Craig is also retiring. She commenced at Box Hill as an Integration Aide and over the past years joined the library team. Here she has provided invaluable support and assistance to our staff and our students. Thank you all so much for the contribution you have made to our school. You will all be sorely missed but we wish you much happiness in your retirement.

Finally I would like to wish all our families, students and staff a happy and restful holiday period and I look forward to seeing you all in the New Year!