St Joseph’s College is a School that Excels

The annual awards recognise schools that have shown sustained improvement and the most impressive gains in VCE results over the past 10 years.

Schools’ raw results are ranked in order to show improvement over a long period of time, using a variety of data including median study scores, the percentage of students obtaining a study score of more than 40, student pathways and VCE completion rates.

The awards recognise the 10 highest-gain schools that The Age has judged as having shown the best improvement in their results.

St Joseph’s College principal Anne Marie Cairns said the news was a giant accolade for the school and had been received with great excitement and pride.

Ms Cairns said the award spoke volumes about the excellent quality of teaching and leadership at St Joseph’s, as well as the high level of support for students in their personal development and growth.

“To be judged as having the most outstanding growth and improvement in VCE results over the past 10 years of any other non-government school in rural and regional Victoria is an enormous thrill for our school, and the wider Echuca-Moama community,” she said.

“It is an achievement that we can all be very proud of and is testament to the hard-working teachers, leadership team, students and families involved with St Joseph’s over many years.”

St Joseph’s College leader of staff and governance Rachel McAsey said the improvement in results had been largely driven by a culture of high expectations and a school-wide improvement agenda.

Ms McAsey said there was also a strong focus on the professional learning of all teachers, and close monitoring to ensure the learning needs of every student were addressed.

“We have deliberately employed quality teachers who are passionate about their work, and we have enabled them with targeted, quality improvement strategies, alongside expert, external coaching and pedagogy coaching,” she said.

“In 2018 we committed to a school improvement project led by Melbourne University and that led to us introducing a range of school improvement measures.”

Ms McAsey said those measures included targeting reading growth through a Year 7 to 9 Reading Room program and supporting Year 12 teachers to undertake VCE assessor training and exam marking to inform and enhance their teaching and learning practice.

“Through our partnership with Melbourne University, we have access to leading educational experts who work with our staff in a variety of fields,” she said.

“Our focus has been on building the capacity of both our senior and junior teachers through this access to experts and through other professional development.”

St Joseph’s College leader of teaching and learning Lisa Saillard said the University of Melbourne also provided regular analysis of their VCE data, which had been instrumental in driving growth.

“Carmel Richardson is a senior research fellow in academic data analytics at the university and she analyses data for our school, taking individual student academic ability into account, along with monitoring class average ability, and gender and year level effects to determine how well each student has achieved,” Ms Saillard said.

“Class and subject patterns are also examined to assist teachers to identify strengths and areas to focus on for improvement.”

Ms Saillard said student pathways were also taken into consideration by the Schools that Excel awards, not just academic results.

She said St Joseph’s had a strong careers and pathways program, and students were well supported when it came to choosing between further study at university, TAFE, taking on an apprenticeship or joining the workforce.

“Our pathways program includes our Year 10 Careers Camp to Melbourne that immerses our students in a broad range of industry experiences, our targeted applied learning program, and work experience for our Year 10 students.

“We also offer course and subject counselling to every student across Year 9 and 10 to inform their course pathways.”