Dear Parents and Families,
Happy new year to all of our families and welcome to Kennedy Baptist College for 2018. In particular, welcome to all of our new families who are joining us for the first time this year. We trust that everyone has had a safe, relaxing and enjoyable holiday and are now ready to commence the new academic year with excitement.
Throughout the holiday time work has continued at the College to complete some major projects. This has included:
- The addition of new lockers for Year 8 and Year 9 students. Every student at Kennedy now has access to a locker outside their Form class.
- The refurbishment of our Block 2 student toilets.
- The replacement of some Block 1 and Block 5 air coolers with reverse cycle air conditioning. This will be an ongoing project across the campus.
Work has also continued over the past weeks in preparing and planning great opportunities for all students and we look forward to sharing these throughout the year. Our goal at Kennedy is to equip students to seize these opportunities and strive for greatness in all that they do. After reviewing all events that took place throughout a very busy 2017 we are extremely confident of continuing to provide opportunities for excellence this year and look forward to students embracing all that is on offer in another exciting year.
Year 12 Results
Our 12 students produced some very pleasing WACE results at the end of last year.. Congratulations to Rachel Lee who achieved the exceptional ATAR score of 99.6, closely followed by David Xing who achieved an ATAR of 99.2. Kennedy Baptist College had 16 students achieve an ATAR score greater than 95.0, an excellent effort.
Congratulations also to Aaron Meadowcroft who achieved a certificate of distinction, for being in the top 0.5% of the state for Business Management and Enterprise. An outstanding effort.
Kennedy was also identified as a School with the highest performing students in the courses of:
- Business Management and Enterprise
- Economics
- Psychology
The class of 2017 produced some pleasing results due to their hard work and the support provided by College staff to ensure students achieve their goals. However, these results also reinforce that our students and parents need to be realistic when selecting student academic pathways. Our 2017 results support the College Administration view that some students are still attempting an ATAR pathway when they may have achieved better results by choosing the General course pathway.
2018 Policy Changes
After reviewing our policies and processes a number of major changes have been made to trial for this year. It is our intention that any change would improve the educational services and therefore outcomes of students and provide an improved environment to support our College families. Please note the following changes for 2018.
- A new policy for student mobile phone use has been developed. Students will no longer be able to carry mobile phones around the College. The use of phones by students is an ongoing distraction and despite the fact that students are not allowed to use their phones during the day we know this has certainly not been the case. Details of the new policy are provided in this newsletter.
- Students who have Physical Education in sessions before recess will be allowed to wear their Physical Education uniform to school in the morning. These students must get changed into full uniform at recess. Should this change be abused by students the policy will be revoked.
- There will be a slight change to the bell times for this year. Recess will be extended by 5 minutes and the lunch time will be reduced by 5 minutes. This will create two equal breaks for students during the day. The new bell times are available in the College handbook.
Mr Mark Ashby
Principal
