Tuesday the 21st of June - Goroke P-12 College

Yesterday we were notified that 2 of our students have been accepted into the John
Monash Science Exchange Programme for term 3. This is an excellent opportunity for
students to attend a Specialist Science school in Melbourne for 5 weeks at the start of term
3 as well as follow up back here at school with projects that will continue throughout the
term. The programme culminates in a final week in term 4. Only 20 students have been
selected from the Grampians region (from Ballarat to the SA border) and 2 of them are
from our school so well done to Grady and Maddie. We look forward to hearing from them
when they return.
Our Primary students were able to compete in their regional cross country finals
yesterday and competed very well with improving times. Thanks to Mr Wearne for
organising the trip across to Dimboola.
Thank you to Mrs Colley and Mrs Charlton for organising the Tutankhamun
excursion to Melbourne for the secondary students. These are often once in a lifetime
opportunities for our students and are a valuable addition to the curriculum being taught
in the school. Thanks also to Sue and Phil Walker for helping accompany the students on
the long journey to Melbourne. Next week our Police Youth Corps students travel to Halls
Gap for 2 days as part of their Advance training.
A reminder to Bogong students that if they would like to begin paying off their trip
they are welcome to make payments at any time. Students will not be permitted to attend
Bogong unless full payment or payment arrangements have been made prior to the camp.
The camp is the third week of next term. Mr Smith and Mrs Rich will be accompanying the
students on this camp.
At our last School Council meeting, our religious education programme was briefly
discussed – not for any of the sensationalist reasons that have been in the media lately but
purely because we are having difficulty trying to fit all of our compulsory curriculum into
the hours we have here at school. With the addition of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen
Garden Project, we are struggling to ensure that our primary students can be involved in
all of the valuable programmes we have running at the school and are part of the
compulsory state curriculum. Currently RE is run for 1 lesson a week at Grades Prep to 4
and our Chaplain is involved in a values based programme at Grade 5/6 (no longer a
formal RE programme). I am asking for staff, parent and student feedback on this issue to
take to School Council to ensure that we have a broad base of opinion before we
eventually make a decision to either retain or replace RE in our primary school.
Currently our Health programme overlaps with many of the values / moral based
topics covered in the RE programme. The RE programme covers specific Bible stories and
information about God and Jesus that is not covered anywhere else in the school
curriculum. In this week‟s newsletter, I have included a reply slip that I would like as many
parents as possible to return to the school so we can make an informed judgement about
parent opinion on RE. In this slip I have mentioned the possibility of the use of school
facilities to offer optional lunchtime or after school RE activities if RE teachers were
available. Please complete the form and return to the school prior to the School Council
meeting in 3 weeks. It is important that parents feed back to us on this issue.
Joy Forbes