During the Scholars and Scholarship Assembly earlier this month, I asked our students, staff and families to reflect on the beginning of 2022. You may recall that we had already been through a challenging 2021, and the start of 2022 arrived with a further set of challenges with flooding and a COVID surge delaying the start of the school year. Furthermore, upon our return, many students and staff were then forced to isolate for long periods of time when one after the other, they and their family members tested positive for COVID.
The impact was of course not confined to St John’s, and a recent global study estimated that COVID may impact learning to the extent of students potentially losing the equivalent of between 0.3 to 0.9 years of schooling across the COVID years. Imagine the impact of losing almost a year of education.
Taking all of this into account, the end of 2022 resulted in many sleepless nights thinking about how that would impact our seniors as they embarked on the next phase of their educational journey. Would their results be heavily impacted? Would we see a big decrease compared to previous years? Will students’ futures be changed as a result?
Having now seen the cycle to completion, with many of last year’s seniors now commenced tertiary studies, it is safe to say that our Class of 2022 rose to these challenges. Almost 60% of the 2022 graduates received an offer for their first tertiary study preference. Add in second preferences and that number rises to two-thirds of our 2022 graduates receiving an offer into their first or second preferences. Bearing in mind our practice of encouraging students to select an aspirational degree that might require a higher ATAR than they are projected to receive, this is an exceptional success rate.
Looking beyond last year’s graduating cohort, if achieving an academic award is an indicator of academic excellence, then Years 5 to 12 have had a successful year with an impressive 39% of all students in those year levels receiving an award. Of course, GPA and academic awards are only two methods of identifying academic success, and success can also be measured in terms of growth, whether it be from B to A, or D to C. In 2022, 78 students in Years 7 to 12 who did not qualify for an academic award were personally recognised for their academic improvement of one or more GPA points during the year. As a result, this brings the percentage to over 50% of St John’s students in 2022 demonstrating significant academic success and growth at St John’s.
Whilst these results are very pleasing, student success is considered more than a score or a grade. We empower our students to embrace everyday challenges, to be resilient, to put their best foot forward and become people of good character.
Mr Andrew Landroth
Deputy Principal – Curriculum and Innovation
