Senior School Assitant Principal
Teaching & Learning
This term our staff have engaged with ‘Reimagining Curriculum’ at Auburn High School. With the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 familiarisation and implementation occurring across 2025 – 2026 we have used this as a vehicle within our School Strategic Plan to review our Year 9 & Year 10 curriculum offerings for our students. With a growing school community, we now see more students in each of our year levels, all while the world continues to evolve and change around us.
Through our Learning Area teams we have engaged the expertise of our staff, alongside student voice through focus groups, and our Pivot student feedback survey on teaching and learning to consider the opportunities we want for all students so that they leave Auburn High School being able to thrive. Not only do we hope that through this exploration we will refresh, rebrand and add to our current subject offerings, but ensure all learners are authentically engaged, challenged and supported as they prepare to select their Senior School Program (VCE, Vocational Major or the International Baccalaureate). We look forward to finalising our 2026 program early next term and sharing this with our community, ready for course selection.
The World Economic Forum outlines the skills most rapidly rising between 2023 – 2027 as part of their Future of Jobs Report. When presented these at the recent IB Conference I felt validated by Auburn High School’s development of our Auburn Learner Qualities in 2020. Based on the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, and in line with our school DARE values, Learning Behaviours and the IB Learner Profile, we committed to ensuring that our students explicitly learn creativity, collaboration, citizenship, communication, critical thinking and character as part of both their learning and community programs. Seeing these skills as those that will be fundamental to support our students to flourish in their post-school journeys validates our next stage of curriculum design for community. While we need to be aware of the limitations on the development of these skills, for example, artificial intelligence, we can also teach students how to harness technology for routine tasks. However, it is the non-routine tasks, as well as social interactions, that technology and AI cannot replace. With deep-learning opportunities in and out of the classroom we can support students to reflect on their own strengths and what they can contribute to the world (socially, economically, ethically, politically, creatively, digitally, or through human knowledge).
Learning Behaviours
Learning Behaviour reports are published occur each term to report on student engagement to our students and their families, promoting metacognition, reflection, and student autonomy in learning. You have been able to download your child’s Learning Behaviour report for Term 1 on Compass via the ‘Reports’ tab. Teachers have made these judgements based on the Learning Behaviour rubric, included on the second page of the report. We hope this has been beneficial data as you attended our recent Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences, supporting them to identify areas of strength and growth.
In the Senior School learning behaviour data is used to determine students’ suitability for promotion to the VCE/IB/VM (for current Year 10s) or acceleration into the VCE (for current Year 9s). Where a student has low, or inconsistent Learning Behaviours strategies should be put in place to support the student to improve their Learning Behaviour throughout the year. Protected time is provided to students as part of Education for Life (E4L) and Study Periods at Year 11 & Year 12 to ensure students reflect on their data. Students enter this into their My Learning Growth templates, helping them to track trends alongside their goal setting.
As a Senior School, the learning behaviour we want to collective work towards is ‘Completes required work’. Work avoidance can be common as the term progresses. Students should be utilising the supports and strategies provided to them in E4L and Study Periods, such as time management and schedule building, using the Study Centre spaces after school, seeking opportunities for teacher support. The start of Term 2 can be an appropriate time to reset and support our students to ground themselves in routine.If we start with ‘Completes required work’, we believe students will also then see an increase in their productivity as students will feel up to date in classes and be able to fully engage in their lessons.
| Rubric criteria we may be struggling with: | Goals we can set to strengthen these: |
Completed Snapshot tasks.
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Students will have protected time early in Term 2 to review their Term 1 data (attendance, learning behaviours and academic results) and enter this into their My Learning Growth documents. We look forward to supporting our students to reflect on their individual data, enabling them to set individualised goals to support their growth across the year.
Vietnam Philanthropy Trip
Thank you to all members of our community who have support our 19 students and 3 staff who are travelling to Vietnam on Monday for our first philanthropy tour. We are so proud to share that we far surpassed our fundraising goal of $3,500. Our final total is $8,911.23.
We have been able to include a toilet in the house project for the family in need within the village. We are also able to provide educational supplies and other products of need with the additional donations we received. We look forward to sharing this, along with our other experiences across the holidays through social media and more formally next term.
Teachers: Ella, Damian & Zoe
Year 12: Jasper, Ivy, Kirsten, Lachlan x 2, Xavier, Tate, Phoebe, Audrey & Rory
Year 10: Charlie, Anaelle, Sam, Yash, Elijah
Year 9: Tully, Tom, Patrick, Alex
Kindest Regards,
Ella Price,
Senior School Assistant Princpal