Year 7 in 2020 - Edition 20 - 2018

From the Principal…

At the Preparatory School Certificate Ceremony, held Tuesday 11 December 2018, our Head of Preparatory School Grant Bock, in his end of year report, announced that Year 7 at Westminster will formally move into the Senior School as from 2020.

In South Australia there has been considerable conjecture around this matter, particularly as we are the last State to make this move. The National Curriculum is written with Years 7 and 8 banded together so it is inevitable that South Australian schools are following suit with public schools aiming to move in 2022.

We do not feel it is necessary to wait for other South Australian schools to make this move. We are one school on the same campus and our state-of-the-art Inquiry and Innovation Hub, opening in 2020, has been designed to accommodate Year 7.

At Westminster, the current (2018) Year 6 cohort will be the last to become Year 7 in the Preparatory School, making our current Year 5 cohort the first Year 7 in the Senior School in 2020.

Further to the recent introduction of specialised STEM subjects in Year 7, we are investing considerable effort to continue this transition of Year 7 into the secondary learning environment, without losing sight of our students’ needs and wellbeing. Many aspects of this fundamental change have been resolved in principle but there is more to addressed, particularly as we begin to assess the move in detail.

This is a major shift in education for our School and State, and we will be working closely with families most impacted by this move. There will be an information evening early in Term 1 2019 to which all parents will be invited but it will be most important and relevant to those year groups within this transitionary process.

We are confident that our students will benefit from the greater range of subject choices, more specialist teachers and access to outstanding learning resources and new facilities.

It is an exciting time for the School and throughout this process of change we remain firmly committed to providing all students with an exceptional education at Westminster.