Manly Selective Campus

Manly Selective Campus

Minutes of P& C General meeting

16 August 2006 at 7.30 pm in Staff Common Room at Manly Campus

Welcome

Maryanne Yeldham welcomed everyone and especially the SRC representatives and Dr Johnstone.

Present:

Kathy Leviton, Cherry Corr, Annemarie Blom, Bronwyn Nicholas, Jose Diacono, Murray Connor, Coral Connor, Deborah Lewis-Bizley, Jonathan Yuill, Perry Yeldham, Colin Henson, Greg Cooper, Mary Anne Yeldham, David Tomlin

Apologies:

Helen Earl, Simon Balderstone, Kim Smiles, Lance Walker

Address by SRC representatives

Jamie Allen and Angus Wheeler put forward arguments in favour of wearing sports uniform on Wednesday:

·  It is time consuming when you have to come to school in normal uniform, then change for PE prac, then change back into normal uniform and then once again change into sports clothes for sport

·  One’s backpack is full enough as it is, without extra sports uniform and sports shoes, which means you may have to get dropped by car at school, rather than ride. If you have to walk, you could be late for school

·  One argument against wearing sports uniform is that it is unhygienic – in their opinion a person sweats less in a polo shirt than the normal school shirt. Also, the changing in and out of PE uniform in the bathrooms is, in any case, not very hygienic

·  If the whole school is in one uniform, this will add to pride in our school.

There was discussion over the fact that protective footwear must be worn – it is an Occupational Health and Safety requirement.

Motion: It will be compulsory for students to wear sports uniform on Wednesday, together with appropriate protective shoes for practical subjects. Proposed – Jose Diacono, seconded Deb Lewis-Bizley. The motion was passed unanimously.

Address by Dr Johnstone

(1)  HSC work

·  The trials have just finished. The children were stressed. Sometimes they had two exams on a day. They are now back in class and some are shattered by their performances.

·  The staff are trying to support the children. In maths they are identifying the strengths and weaknesses, both in past teaching and in individual students.

·  To assist in studying the children are given traditional papers and a written set of solutions and examiner’s comments

·  In addition the maths department is preparing graphs showing the results of the trials on a class by class, and question by question basis– in this way the teachers can see the averages for their classes and can compare those averages to the overall average. By this process they can identify which areas are causing problems for each class.

·  The maths department is purchasing better quality books, which will be available for future cohorts, and which will improve results

·  They are providing extra classes in lunchtime and extra lessons outside of normal classes

·  In revision they will be using a new projector device to show different scripts – where problems lie, and setting out of answers. This lets the children see common errors from the actual script (They propose to do something similar for the School Certificate)

·  Dr Johnstone offered thanks for the donation of the new projector device, which he thinks is extremely useful

(2)  Bringing together of maths around us

·  In year 7, 8 and 9 the tradition is to sit and work out the answer and take delight in getting the correct answer. However, they tend to lose sight in what they are doing.

·  We need to do more of relating maths to what the kids do eg working out how much paint is needed to paint a classroom; the best rate for buying cake

·  They are introducing the children to insoluble problems – they find this interesting

·  They are trying to lessen the use of textbooks. They have tried using CD roms instead of the heavy textbooks, but a lot of people reported that they had trouble with the CD Rom

·  They are also trying to beautify the environment. They found that the maths corridor was in need of brightening up and have put up puzzle posters, posters on the history of some mathematicians, and famous sayings. The attendees were taken for a tour of the maths corridor, and all agreed that it was a job well done.

Minutes of Previous meeting

Accepted – proposed Perry Yeldham, seconded Colin Henson

Matters arising

None

Correspondence in

(1)  Copy of a letter from J Yuille and P Byers

(2)  3 Commonwealth Bank Statements – given to Lance

(3)  Terry Miller Concrete Water Tanks Pty Ltd – to Environment Committee

(4)  Letter from J Boylan on behalf of M Carolan re Chess - The Musical

(5)  Letter from Stewart House thanking Karen Palmer and Manly Campus Second Hand Uniform Shop for donation of jackets

(6)  P & C Federation re: Annual Conference

(7)  Family Planning NSW re educational publications

(8)  Side by Side – newspaper for NSW public schools

(9)  P & C journals

Treasurer’s report

Lance sent his apologies, but provided the financial statements - Attached

Maryanne reported that the school has some funds left and they are being allocated according to the school’s needs.

President’s report

Attached

Address by David Tomlin

(1)  With regard to the HSC the staff are

·  Discussing strategies for resilience with the children

·  Assisting with time management skills

·  Meg Tulk is ringing around giving support

The next 6 weeks is the most dangerous period in that momentum must be maintained

(2)  Rock Eisteddfod – this was an outstanding success. They have made it into the grand finals, often rehearsing in difficult circumstances. The grand final is on 7th September

(3)  The lockers have arrived

(4)  He noted the upcoming TAS and Creative Art exhibitions

(5)  School captains

There have been some difficulties in the way in which they have been elected in the past. David wants to propose changes, which will involve a change to the SRC constitution.

·  David wants voting rights to extend to years 7 to 10.

·  He would like voting to take place at the end of term 2 which means that the incoming captains will be able to have some training before the year 12’s leave.

·  This will promote the profiles of the captains.

·  There will be a simplified nomination form. Election will involve an informal interview with the electoral board

·  He believes that his proposal is simpler and fairer, but it is ultimately up to the SRC

(6)  Principal Awards for Semester 1 and gender imbalance:

·  David notes that things can be improved and that the process should be more transparent.

·  They determine these awards by looking at the reports, and the number of high achievements

·  He agrees that the process does favour girls

·  They are taking measures in the school to try to address the imbalance, but he noted that in external exams girls on the whole out perform boys. The gap narrows in later years when boys have more choice in subjects and can see the end in sight

·  Educationalists are aware of the imbalance

·  In MSC there are more boys than girls (as in all Co Ed schools)

·  The school is looking at extra programmes and ways in which we can change the sorts of subjects offered and the way in which they are taught

At present we have in place:

·  The study skills program

·  The self evaluation and goal setting programs

·  The promoting achievement committee –looking at why boys don’t collect awards. They are also referring to the work of Dr Andrew Martin

·  Having taught in a boy’s school, David knows that there is no easy answer. An approach is to have lots of extracurricular activities

·  Nonetheless, we compare well against similar schools eg Caringbah

·  He sees MSC is holding it’s own and that the pattern of improvement will continue.

Band and Canteen Subcommittees

No reports

Environment subcommittee

·  They applied for funding from Keep Australia Beautiful, but were unsuccessful. They have missed the deadline for the Gould awards

·  They are applying for the Federal Government community water grant – for up to $K50 – by 25 August we need to prepare the submission. The proposed project is a water tank.

·  A vegetation management plan has been approved for the bushland area at the top of the school. This land is one of the very few areas of uncleared bushland in Manly. They have had discussion with the SRC and it is agreed that this area can be a very useful resource for eg biology, art classes, to shoot films. On that basis they are planning a working bee on Sat 16th Sept from 9 to 12 am to clean up the area – there is a lot of litter. They will also look at the possibility of planting a few things

PAG Report

Perry Yeldham attended the PAG meeting.

·  They looked at new websites covering the whole campus

·  The College band is going to the Gold Coast – 45 children, including 5 from Manly

·  There is concern that the NBSC is poaching children from other schools, and hence Narrabeen High, Barrenjoey High and Pittwater High have formed a quazi campus.

·  They looked at the enrolments to Freshwater senior campus:

30 out of 150 from Mackellar

10 out of 70 from Bally

40 out of 190 from Cromer and

1 out of 120 from Manly

·  It was noted that there are some vacancies at Manly for 2007 due to a large year 12 cohort leaving.

General Business

There was discussion regarding the timing of the Jindabyne trip since it was the week before the HSC trials and so accelerants came back from Jindabyne just before the trials. It is hoped that next year the trip will be after the HSC trials.

The meeting finished at 9.30

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