Our school values of Aspiration, Responsibility and Citizenship underpin all that we do at our school. The start of the year is a perfect time for you to discuss with your child what their aspirations are for this year. At our beginning of the year assemblies we have spoken about everyone wanting to have a better year than before. What goals does your child have for this year?

This is also the time to be very clear with our students about our expectations of them and what they can expect from their teachers. We expect them to display responsibility in all settings of the College, including to and from school.

All through Term 1 we will have a specific ARC focus of Anti-bullying, the bystander and discrimination. This fits under our value of Citizenship.

Some students bully others or interact badly with them. It can be as simple as a derogatory comment. Although students who bully are in the minority, all students have the power to change this behaviour, as very often they will be a bystander, even if only unwillingly and by accident. We will be exploring over the next few weeks with our students what a bystander is, the different types of bystander that there are, and a phenomenon known as the “Bystander Effect”.

If you are interested in learning about this effect, please follow this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufs8cKyzLvg to a 15 minute TED talk by Ken Brown. It is quite eye-opening.