The 2017 National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results have been released to schools and I am delighted to write that EAC’s results are nothing short of excellent. As part of the NAPLAN program, students in Year 3,5,7 and 9 undertake tests in Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar and Numeracy. In all five domains across each of the four year groups, our students were above state average. The entire Emmanuel Anglican College community can be extremely proud of this outstanding outcome.

Within the detail, there are many wonderful individual and group achievements. Among the highlights were the significant learning gains that students in each year group achieved in terms of their writing. As part of the Embedding Excellence School Improvement Program, the College had identified a desire to improve the writing of all students and developed a series of strategies to target the development of writing. These results are clear confirmation of the impact of those strategies on student learning. Across the four year groups, the students also demonstrated significant growth in their numeracy skills in the two years since their last attempt at NAPLAN. The students in Year 9 will also be very pleased of their results, as a majority of student have pre-qualified for the minimum literacy and numeracy standard in readiness to undertake the HSC.

The College will now set about reviewing the performance of all students and identifying ways to respond to the key messages contained within its detail for teaching and learning. While the data is significant, detailed and allows comparison to state and national trends, it is worth remembering that this is one of many assessment tasks that students will undertake this year and that it is providing a snapshot of student learning at a specific point in time. Recently, we have received results from NAPLAN, the Australian Mathematics Competition, ICAS English and Mathematics as well as the numerous internal assessment tasks that students undertake. In isolation each of these results tell a small part of the story of each student. Their greatest worth, however, is found in gathering all this information together to help create a profile of each learner that can shape what teachers do in providing meaningful experiences for students in their class. Given the high quality of all our results in external testing, I wish to congratulate to all our students for their ongoing commitment to their own learning as well as the great efforts of our teaching staff.

At our Whole College Assembly this week, we were celebrating achievement and recognised numerous individual and group achievements including our Gold Award recipients, ICAS Science and Mathematics Challenge high achievers. Our athletics Age Champions, Lighthouse Service and Leadership Award Recipients and our Choir and Primary Band Eisteddfod winners. EAC’s performance at the Lismore Eisteddfod was outstanding. The College won five separate divisions and were named Champion School. Congratulations to all the teachers and students that were involved in all of these events and for all their accomplishments.

Congratulations to our NCIS Athletics squad who travelled to Coffs Harbour to compete and represent the College. Many personal bests were achieved on the day and we are awaiting final results but anticipate another pleasing outcome for the College. Thanks also to the very large contingent of parents who travelled down to support our team. I am sure that extra support was greatly appreciated by the students and staff. Special thanks to all the staff who have been involved in the training sessions and got up extremely early to make the day possible for the students.

Once again, I invite all our parents and grandparents to join us for two very significant event next week. Firstly, on Thursday evening 24 August we will hold the annual College Art Showcase, commencing at 6.00pm in the Joan Pickup Library. There will be artwork on display from students in Kindergarten right through to our HSC students. The senior Hospitality students will provide some scrumptious offerings along with the Friends of EAC who will ensure that you do not hunger or thirst! It will be a wonderful evening and a great opportunity to see and enjoy the artist talent of our students.

On Friday 25 August we will celebrate Book Week with our annual Book Parade and Grandparents Day. A parade of all primary school students will take place at 9.30am in the undercover area and is followed by classroom visits and then a lovely morning tea in the Ezzy Centre.

Mr Robert Tobias
Principal