Welcome to Term 3. Sadly Term 3, 2021 is looking a bit like Term 3, 2020 due to ongoing COVID concerns. I know there would be many disappointed families who had school holiday plans affected due to new restrictions. Please remember the our school guidelines are:

• Face masks are recommended for use within the school for students and staff 
• Face masks are mandatory on buses, although the bus companies will monitor enforcement of this requirement. 
• Any student who has COVID-19 symptoms is not to attend school until they get a COVID test and provide evidence of a negative result to the College. 
• Please advise the College if your child has attended any declared COVID hotspots, including Orange, Blayney and Cabonne LGA’s, and follow the advice from NSW Health. 
• Parents who need to come onto school grounds out of necessity (such as to collect an unwell student) must wear a face mask and sign in using the QR code as well as any sign in requirements the College has. 
• The school will continue to maintain all COVID safe protocols around cleaning, social distancing, and hygiene. 

Today we are running Semester 2 Parent Teacher Student Interviews for Years 7 - 11. Over 600 interviews have been booked online and it is great to see so many families taking up the opportunity to talk to teachers about their child’s progress, even though this has to be online. We do know there have been some technical difficulties today for some families in connecting and I would like to apologise for this. We are mandated to move from Zoom to Teams as our online communication platform and I thank families for their support and patience in this process.

Enrolment interviews are currently occurring for Years 7 and 11. Please encourage anyone you know who is looking to enrol a child for 2022 to contact the Front Office or to go to our website for an enrolment pack.

We began talking to Year 11 about the leadership process this week.  We are very proud of our current Student Leadership Team for their hard work and excellent role-modelling for younger students.

Year 10 began the journey of subject selections for Stage 6 this week. It is an exciting time for them as they make choices about their subjects. We encourage them to make choices based on their interests and skills. Many students are uncertain about career directions at this stage and should not be concerned about this. I always encourage students to be involved in as many different experiences as they can and to meet many new people because this is where career ideas will often occur.

Speaking of new experiences, we are hoping to run an Australian immersion trip to the Northern Territory next year, COVID permitting. Mr Chifley has provided details of this in the newsletter.

These are challenging times, please do not hesitate to reach out if you would like further support for your son/daughter. One of my favourite prayers at times like these is:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.

God bless

Kathy Holding