Principal hopeful of return to stability

TORQUAY College students are back in the classroom after two years of COVID-19 interrupted schooling that saw many spend much of the last two years working from home.

“There’s a general excitement … around being back at school and being back at work,” principal Jessica Kelly said, herself returning after taking maternity leave in 2021.

“Maybe initial apprehensions around what the school year was going to feel like, given that we had finished the year in lockdown.”

Ms Kelly is sharing the principal role this year with Emily Burgess, who is stepping up from the assistant principal role, the pair respectively occupying the position on a 0.6 and 0.4 basis, taking over from Christian Smith who was acting principal in 2021.

They’re joined by many new colleagues after more than 28 academic staff departed the school last year, a total of at least 37 have left since 2020, many redeployed within the region.

“We’ve got new teachers every year … it’s fun to have new people,” Ms Kelly said.

An Education Department spokesperson said the school welcomed 12 new staff members in 2022. In recent years the decline in student numbers has led to what’s known as excess processes for academic staff, whereby teacher numbers are reduced in accordance with the number of enrolled students.

The Torquay and surrounds student catchment is now being serviced by two newly established primary schools in the region, three including the newly established Christian school, a potential contributing factor in the declining enrolments at Torquay College which have steadily declined from a peak of 1055 in 2018, to close to 900 in 2022.

It’s estimated this trend is likely to continue over coming years with student numbers expected to dip into the low 800s by 2024.

Ms Kelly said she’s unfazed by the drop, “I’m really happy with where we are with enrolment”.

“I think too, because I was away for 12 months, so I actually don’t really know what’s happened up until starting day one and saying, ‘oh, okay, this is what we’ve got, this is what we’re working with’, and the families that we have are the ones that we’re focusing on.”

One area that may come into sharper focus this year for families and the school is the 2021 Naplan results that reveal some areas of potential concern.

Grade 3 spelling, writing, grammar and punctuation were at their lowest in the last five reporting years. Almost half of Grade 5 were also below the grammar and punctuation benchmark, the lowest result in the previous five reporting years.

“The school has maintained strong NAPLAN results for reading and numeracy for Grade 3s and Grade 5s between 2017 and 2021,” a spokesperson for the department said, putting it in the top 22-27 per cent for the state.

A third of Grade 5 students, however, have remained below the benchmark in numeracy and spelling over at least the last three reporting periods.

The department said Torquay College parent surveys show consistently high levels of confidence in the school’s performance.

Towards the end of last year Premier Daniel Andrews committed to no more statewide or citywide lockdowns, meaning students working from home in 2022 should be a thing of the past.

For Ms Kelly, it’s a welcome opportunity to restore some stability to school life.

“I’d love to be able to provide that security for our families … and support and safety. That would be the dream,” she said.