Newcastle High School

Quality education in a caring environment

Telephone02 4969 3177

Emailnewcastle-h.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Principal's Report

Principal - Janene Rosser

Including: Focus on Excellence and Enrolment Information

A Focus on Excellence

It is a requirement that all NSW government schools develop and publish a Strategic Improvement Plan (SIP).  Our SIP is the working document that details the steps our school will take to improve learning outcomes, and the achievement and growth of all students. To ensure continuous improvement, the SIP reflects where our school is at and how it will further improve learning, teaching and leading; with a focus on excellence.  This term, staff, students, families and the community are invited to contribute to Newcastle High School’s draft plans for 2021-2024, presented for consultation after a great deal of self-reflection, evaluation and research.  

For 2021-2024, the Vision of our SIP states:

 
Newcastle High School is an inclusive, diverse community that demonstrates a passion for learning underpinned by determination, hard work and a shared responsibility for growth in all areas of endeavours. Through respectful and meaningful connections, we build resilience and perseverance in order to develop goals that help us expand our creativity, knowledge and understanding.
 


For 2021-2024, our three core strategic directions of our SIP are:

Strategic Direction 1 - Student growth and attainment:

To ensure students grow and attain their learning goals through explicit, consistent and research-informed teaching and learning practices. Our teachers will evaluate their effectiveness and reflectively adapt their practice through quality, targeted professional learning and use of student assessment data to inform teaching and learning. 

Strategic Direction 2 - Staff growth and high performance:

To develop a high-performance school culture, where staff growth, wellbeing, resilience and a focus on excellence is strategically supported across all areas of the school, to deliver growth in student outcomes.  Our staff will evaluate their impact and reflectively adapt their practice across all domains of the school to achieve our goals.

Strategic Direction 3 - Leadership for growth:

To ensure instructional, distributed and visible leadership creates a school culture of shared responsibility for growth and attainment, where the strategic focus on excellence is supported across all areas of the school through high expectations, positivity and high performance to achieve our vision.

Student Enrolment 2021

Newcastle High School has been increasing in size for approximately 6 years and this year, we are predicted to be at full capacity, with our enrolment cap of 1,250 (Parkway Avenue site) and 130 (Cooks Hill Campus site) almost being met now.  It is expected that non-local enrolments will not be accepted early 2021 across many year groups.

The Annual Enrolment Return (AER) for 2021, as was completed in Week 2, where we have notified the Department of:

▪   Year 7 = 185

▪   Year 8 = 211

▪   Year 9 = 224

▪   Year 10 = 221

▪   Year 11 = 222

▪   Year 12 = 122

▪   Support Unit = 70

▪   Cooks Hill Campus = 126

Janene Rosser - Principal