The school year is now very much underway and I am pleased to report to our community that everything has been going extremely well. We started the year with about a third of our students new to ACS and I am highly impressed how well these students have found their feet and are already contributing to the colour and life of our school. Our ‘old hands’ have been supportive in helping new people settle in and particular thanks to our ‘ambassador’ team who have been at the cutting edge of supporting these new students.

Thank you for everyone who came along to our Open House on Tuesday 9th September. We had a big turn out for this event and it was a great chance to meet our teaching team and find out more about the Middle School curriculum. I have received a number of very positive comments and emails from parents about the evening and I wanted to thank those people that took the time to give us feedback.

Our Middle School student council (MSSC) is very much leading the life of Middle School with the elections, a BBQ social, spirit days and a charity raising ‘Can Drive’ to raise funds for the Salvation Army. We have also now formed our MSSC team for 2008-2009 and I want to congratulate and thank the students who put themselves forward as MSSC representatives to serve our community.

I want to thank Ms. Galemmo and her team for their efforts and I very much look forward to future MSSC events.

I enjoyed presenting to a number of you in the recent Middle School Parent Information Forum about Middle Schooling. I hope that those of you who could attend found it a useful insight into how our Middle School works and for those who were unable to attend, you may collect a copy of the PowerPoint presentation if you wish by asking the MS Office. In the presentation I asked parents to share their ideas with me on what people understand ‘sufficient academic challenge’ to be? This is being raised as we have a range of different perspectives on what constitutes an appropriate level of academic challenge - is it simply academic rigor and time spent studying or is it more holistic in nature? The more we understand the different perspectives the greater ability we will have in further developing a balanced programme which meet the needs of all our students – Please let me know your thoughts!? A number of suggestions arose at the end regarding our Native Language programme. These have been passed onto Rachel Morgan, our Native Language coordinator for consideration.

I would like to end my preamble to this newsletter by highlighting the incredible dedication and work put in by our teaching team here. Teachers are at the cutting edge of what goes in any school and I regularly see staff here going way beyond the call of duty in the service they offer our students. Teaching is a career that stems from a genuine desire to help, support and develop young minds and I know that all teachers are first and foremost here ‘for the students’. I know that issues or questions sometimes arise and I encourage you to raise these directly with our teachers as they are best placed to address your query and will appreciate the feedback. I encourage staff to keep good links with you and communicate issues quickly but also give positive feedback.

If something goes particularly well at school please do let the teacher concerned &/or me know – it will always be appreciated and will help us know which parts of what we do have the most positive effect.

Peter Hosier