Dear Parents and Carers,

I am pleased to share with families some important information related to new programs that the College is offering during 2023. These new programs are in addition to the recently expanded senior pathways offerings to students, to ensure that we offer a suitable pathway for each learner.

Interdisciplinary and STEM Focus Days

Throughout this year the College is trialling the introduction of focus days at Years 7, 8 and 9 that provide interdisciplinary learning opportunities for our students and expand our STEM offerings. These new initiatives are an important feature of preparing our students for their future career. Today we live in a rapidly changing world due to technological advancements. The jobs and careers of today will look very different in the years to come. In fact, in your daughter’s lifetime they will potentially have 17 different jobs and 5 different careers, during a time when in fact full-time ongoing employment is no longer guaranteed.

We also live in a world where we talk about enterprise, technical and career management skills over a singular definitive career. Where in today’s world the emphasis on and demand for enterprise skills is on the rise.

The enterprise skills that employers value and look for include:
• Problem solving
• Communication skills
• Digital literacy
• Teamwork
• Presentation skills
• Critical thinking
• Creativity
• Financial literacy

While career management skills include:
• Self-awareness
• Self-belief in that skills learnt in one space can be applied to another
• Decision making to build opportunities and career
• Job seeking
• Use of career services / information
• Lifelong learning

The emphasis of our new programs is on the development of enterprise skills and raising awareness around STEM careers and approaches to learning. As a College, we want to continue to provide an education to our students that is faith based, wholistic, contemporary, future focused, adapts to the changing needs of the time and enables our students to reach their potential.

Year 9 Play

The Performing Arts encourage our young people to explore their emotions, expand their imagination and helps them to discover their own unique voice. Each discipline of music, drama and dance engages a young person’s brain, body and emotions in different ways to encourage their confidence and to find joy in self-expression.

Therefore, I am pleased to announce that this year Ave Maria College will host the first Year 9 Play, in partnership with St Bernard’s College called, ‘The Curse of Macbeth’. The play is about a group of secondary school students who plan for and perform the Shakespearian play ‘Macbeth’. 

Thank-you to Mrs Katie Houghton and Ms Cassandra Hutchison for the leadership and commitment in bringing this new initiative to fruition.

I know you will join me in wishing both students and staff well in this new initiative.

International Learning Tours

To complement the learning that occurs within the classroom, the College has revived the International Learning Tour Program. This aims to provide an authentic context for students to develop knowledge, skill and understanding whilst furthering their discovery of self. The trips on offer for 2024 include:

God bless and may we trust in the truth of God’s word as we strive for truth through love.