At RHAC’s annual welcome evening for parents and carers, I referred to our new Strategic Intent document , which outlines the school’s direction from now until 2030. Our vision is central to our plan for the next 5 years.
To be a united Christian learning community committed to taking opportunities, serving and achieving.
RHAC is one of 18 schools owned by the Anglican Schools Corporation. Their mission and vision also influence our future:
- To provide affordable quality Christian education.
- Serving Christ by equipping students for His world.
The words affordable and quality influence my leadership of RHAC. I am aware that school fees are a substantial expense for parents, particularly at this time of rising inflation and interest rates. Therefore, I invest many hours every week working with staff to help ensure that the money we receive from parent fees and government income is wisely spent to provide the best quality education we can.
However, quality education does not necessarily mean spending a lot of money. Excellent learning in the classroom needs perceptive and hard-working teachers. Therefore, our executive and middle leadership teams invest a considerable amount of time working with teachers to help them consistently improve their professional practice. RHAC teachers have recently started using the Great Teaching Toolkit as part of their professional learning. This is an outstanding package developed in the United Kingdom and is produced by some fine educational researchers such as Professor Dylan Wiliam.
I am confident that the work being invested into teacher professional practice and high expectations of students is bearing fruit. Last year, our Year 12 students produced the best HSC results in the college's history.
There are some websites that rank schools based on HSC results. I have previously been reluctant to refer to these rankings, partly because the rank is determined by how many students receive a mark over 90% in a subject. If a school managed to help a struggling student jump from a mark of 65% to 85% in the HSC, this result would have no influence on the ranking even though this is an outstanding achievement.
While I don’t think that the online school rankings are the most reliable indicator of the quality of education a school provides, it was encouraging that our school jumped by 188 places last year in the ranking table.
While it is important that our school community strives to achieve the best possible academic outcomes for students, it is important to remember that our school is so much more than producing good marks. We want RHAC students to develop their ability to perceive themselves and others, and know how to connect meaningfully with people who are very different to themselves. We want our students to serve others in need. I trust that our parents are seeing the fruit of this in the lives of their children. In doing so, we are going some way to achieving the Corporation’s mission of Serving Christ by equipping students for His world.
