Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him. Psalm 127:3
We have finally reached the final week for our Year 12 students. For many of you it means that you are coming to the end of school fees too! I think I just heard a “Hallelujah!”
I remember this happening in my family; wondering what I would do with all the extra money I’ll have in my pocket. Unfortunately that dream rarely becomes a reality and my investment in my children continues! Without a doubt though, I strongly believe that it is a good investment and the rewards, though often appearing elusive, are realised eventually.
This week is very busy. Our Year 12s have just finished their exams and returned their equipment and now they are preparing for the Formal on Thursday and their Graduation Assembly on Friday. We have just received the results from the Queensland Core Skills Test and they are outstanding. 25% of our students who sat the test got an ‘A’. Almost half got an ‘A’ or a ‘B’. Below is a graph that shows this distribution. We are extremely proud of these results and I want to say thanks particularly to Rob Steffler who has worked especially hard with the students and helped prepare them for this test.
Next week the students are off on their final school holiday – I think they call it schoolies! This celebration has a terrible reputation involving lots of things that can cause all sorts of harm. I am so pleased that more than one third of our students will be heading off to the Whitsundays to celebrate schoolies with Scripture Union. Check out the fun they will be having at http://su-schoolies.com/locations/whitsundays/
Whilst it is great for the Year 12s, everyone else is still a couple of weeks out from finishing. Next week are the Year 11 exams and the 10s and 11s will finish on Friday, 28 November. The Year 10 students will celebrate with their dinner-dance at the Caloundra Events Centre on that Friday evening.
Clothes Drive for Fiji
On Tuesday we held a clothes drive and free dress day. The idea came from Briana Williams in Year 12 who realised how blessed we are in this country to have so much and how GREAT it would be to bless the people in Fiji who we work with when we go over on our Mission Trips. The students brought in so many outfits to school that we now have a good dilemma. How do we get them to Fiji?
Reports
Right now staff are extremely busy finalising assessments, marking and doing reports. We anticipate that reports will be emailed on Friday 5 December.
Prayer Points
Please pray for our Year 12s. Many will be anxiously waiting for their university offers. Others will be looking for jobs, apprenticeships or traineeships. Please pray for safety whilst they celebrate the end of their schooling.
Please pray for our Year 11s. I spoke to them this morning about their plans for 2015. I was really impressed with their ideas and the plans they want to implement next year. They will need to return to school in 2015, fully focussed on achieving the best results possible. Please pray for them as they commence their exams as well and finalise their assessments.
Please pray for our Year 10s. They also have a lot of assessments to complete. Next year they will need to be seriously considering their futures. We have had a record number of students applying to do Headstart courses at University whilst others are keenly pursuing traineeships and certificate courses as well. I’m excited about what these students will bring to the College in 2015.
Please pray for our staff. They are quite tired and I honestly say they deserve a long holiday!
David Heyworth, Head of Senior School