Dear College Community,
I warmly welcome everybody back to Hillcrest Christian College for the second semester. I pray that you have had a restful and enjoyable break and are looking forward to this semester with great anticipation and excitement.
Last week, Hillcrest held the annual MakeThink conference on Thursday and Friday, where we were fortunate to have some frontline international speakers visit the College to share ideas and new strategies with the Hillcrest staff and also teachers from other schools. This year we had three high quality and internationally-recognised speakers;
- Brad Waid from USA who spoke about Driving Engagement through the use of Emerging Technologies in the classroom;
- Dan Haesler from Australia (but is really from Manchester) who spoke about Engaging the Kids of Today in education;
- Dr Robert Loe from the UK who spoke about Relationships before Engagement.
These men are experts in their fields and gave everyone who attended an incredible insight into their area of expertise, providing lots of wonderful practical steps at how we can improve what we do with each child in the classroom. There were also a number of breakout sessions that were run by Hillcrest staff and also outstanding educators from other places. The reports from these sessions were also positive as the ideas and practical examples demonstrated could be placed directly into the classroom which delighted our own staff.
On Monday this week, many staff travelled to Mueller College to take part in the Christian Schooling Conference, “Created for Community”, which was a wonderful opportunity for staff from Hillcrest to hear the best Christian-focussed learning and to mix with staff from other Christian schools. This was also an excellent day for our staff and they have gained further insight into learning which will be implemented into our classrooms this semester.
Many parents will be aware that the SLC students were surveyed early last term as part of our ongoing annual monitoring of the Vertical House system that we have implemented over the last 18 months. Dr Rob Loe who spoke at the MakeThink conference leads the organisation that undertakes the Relational Schools survey. When we last undertook this survey, Hillcrest demonstrated an underwhelming relational outcome, aligned with other schools that showed the bigger the school, the lower the relational coefficient. I am thrilled to let you know that the survey conducted last term in the SLC has shown a complete turn around and that some of the outcomes from the survey included;
- Relationships have improved across all five drivers of relationships that we measure (Directness, Continuity, Multiplexity, Parity and Commonality).
- The outcome for ‘school effect’ is one of the highest results in the study of 27 schools, suggesting that Hillcrest now has a strong relational culture.
- Interpersonal relationships for the cohorts now in Years 9-12 have improved markedly since the previous study
- Relationships across all academic achievement groups have improved, with less disparity across the different segments
- The strength of relationships between students is the main defining characteristic for groups of students with different levels of wellbeing at Hillcrest
- Hillcrest’s student-student relationships have improved remarkably in less than a year. This should provide encouragement to Hillcrest’s leaders to continue with the interventions they have put in place.
These are outstanding findings and on behalf of the whole College, I congratulate the SLC leadership and staff for the successful implementation of the Vertical House system. It has created a completely new paradigm for our students, and they are now coming to school in a uniquely high relational community. We all know that once we have students engaged in relationships, learning becomes far more effective. We haven’t finished the implementation journey yet, but the foundations of the Vertical House system are truly making a difference to students on a daily basis.
I would also like to announce some leadership changes for the rest of this year:
- Mr Dirk van Bruggen will become Acting Deputy Head of College for the remainder of the year looking after a number of areas for the College including finance, operations and IT;
- Mr Darren Rackemann will take over from Mr van Bruggen as the Acting Head of SLC for the remainder of the year;
- Mr Jason Day will take over from Mr Rackemann as the Acting Deputy Head of SLC for the remainder of the year;
- Mr Matthew Cavanaugh will transition to a Deputy Head leader in the JLC.
A number of staff will be allocated additional responsibilities to support the leadership team through this transition and I thank all of these staff members for their willingness to step up and support the leadership of the College at this time. We will ensure that all of these changes will have minimal impact on the daily running of the College and we commit to continuing to build a school that is founded on quality relationships for every student and a learning experience that allows each child to achieve their goals.
Blessings
Jeff Davis
Executive Head of College