Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. Henry Ford This has certainly been an eventful year with many expected and unexpected obstacles for us all to navigate. The primary focus of curriculum this year has been around quality planning and targeted goals. This has also been the focus of our Academic Mentoring sessions, with goal setting occurring in all grades, along with the Academic Interviews continuing in Year 11. We are seeing improvement in the academic performance of those students who are engaging with the goal setting, particularly in Year 8 and 9. One of our many successes this year has been our Year 10 Transition Curriculum, which included the SET planning and Careers Days. Last year we implementation a modified the structure of the Year 10 programs and utilised the new subject names from the senior years to help our students and their families to make more informed decisions concerning subjects as they move into Year 11. The progression of our current Year 11s in the new QCE system has been very positive with consistent improvement for the majority of students. Many of these young men link their success to their Year 10 classes and the improved SET Planning process in 2019. We continued to build upon this in 2020, despite COVID, Mr Phillip Dembowski was able to engage James Cook University and Central Queensland University to speak with the boys, along with the career, VET and SET Planning workshops run by the College. Our current Year 10 students have made some sound choices for 2021, which will be vital for them on their journey through the senior years.
2020 saw our first group of Year 12s progress through the new QCE system. The ATAR has been difficult for the students and their families to get used to, but this new curriculum meant significant change for all students undertaking the QCE. The Applied subjects were more stringent, and the content rigour increased compared to the previous OP system. VET requirements were Government monitored carefully and funding goal posts were changed every term. A new curriculum and COVID disruptions have better prepared this cohort of seniors for resilience as they enter in the workforce in 2021. The 2020 ATAR students will receive their ranks and first round university offers on the 19 December 2020. Despite writing this article prior to this time, I am certain that IPC will place well. Our focus with the students has been around their goals. Iggy Park has never been about the best scores possible to make the College look good – it is always about knowing what our young men are dreaming of and striving for and helping them to achieve it. Even in October, I believe that we have been able to do so this again in 2020 for the majority of our students. We have a large number of students who were given early placement offers in September to study at James Cook University (JCU), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Central Queensland University (CQU) and Australian National University (ANU) next year. Some men have already been approved for scholarships and bursaries and are ready to commence their tertiary studies. This past year, the College, students, families and our community have faced many obstacles. We could not be more proud of our students who have navigated everything thrown at them this year by keeping their eyes fixed on their goals. Allison Elcoate | Deputy Principal Operations and Data Analysis
If there is one key lesson that I believe every Iggy Park man will take from 2020, it will be improved resilience. The period of online learning, despite being unexpected, was surprisingly a much needed shake up that schools throughout Australia needed. It required teachers to engage in better use of ICT to support learning, students were able to experience tertiary-style teaching and be more self-directed. Not all students flourished during the time of online learning, but this helped us to understand where barriers to learning might be. In the classroom, sometimes these barriers can be overlooked or masked by physical behaviour and interactions with other students. At the College, we saw a marked improvement in teacher use of IT, engagement with student educational data, increased checking for understanding and reengagement of some students who had begun to withdraw emotionally from schooling. There is a lesson or skill that every person in our community can all take away from this time, because experience is what you get, when you don’t get what you want.
Ignatius Park College 2020
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COLLEGE
Deputy Principal - Operations and Data Analysis
