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Date of Dictation: Date of Meeting:

Bishop Browning,

1 February 1989 7 February 1989

ST 'PAUL'S SCHOOL COUNCIL

HEADMASTER'S REPORT

I have pleasure in presenting this report to the above meeting of the School Council.

We - welcome to this meeting Dr Peter Coman, the Diocesan Educational Consultant, who has been invited to join us for the discussion in particular of two matters: his role as it affects us at St Paul's, and the Archbishop's Seminar for Members of School Councils planned for April this year.

As advised, at the end of this meeting we shall also be welcoming the Members of the Board of the St Paul's (Bald Hills) Fo'ilndation Ltd and the Development Officer, Mr A K Morris, in order to preview and discuss the presentation planned to be made in association with the launching of the Foundation. I

1. COUNCIL

I welcome Council back to another very busy year in. the life of our School. There was a good attendance at the Council/Staff Dinner held on January 23 and this again set a good note for the year.

I am· not sure whether Canon Church will be with us when we meet: when last heard of he was disporting himself at Diggers Rest near Sunbury, northwest of Melbourne, but Council may like to note that this month marks the fiftieth anniversary of his being made a Deacon.

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Headmaster's Report to Council - 7/2/89 -,Page 2

2. STAFF

I have appoj,_nted as Student Counsellor Mr K J Lynch, formerly the Student Counsellor at Brisbane Grannnar School for most of the 16 years which he served at that School. Mr Lynch is well-experienced and qualified and was clearly the outstanding applicant. Mr Lynch is currently on leave following his departure from BGS and will be conunencing duty on March 13, although he has made himself available as a Consultant ·to counsel individual students in the meantime if needed. I should prefer Mr Lynch's appointment to remain confidential to Council and those senior members of staff who assisted in the selection process until an announcement is made closer to the time at which he will commence.

3 • S'IUDENTS

The enrolment paper, in the form usually produced showing destinations of leavers and sources of new students, is under preparation and will be forwarded to Council with or before the papers for the March Meeting.

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Headmaster's Report to Council - 7/2/89 ; Page 3

(a) The Class of 1988

The results obtained by many Year 12 students in~ 1988 were most acceptable, and a summary of their TE Scores, together with a Statement of Distribution throughout the State, is attached to this report. Their final results, however, demonstrated what we had known, namely that there were two almost distinct groups in the year: the top half, as it were, who gained TE Scores of say 700 and above, who maintained the School's performance above the State average, and a long tail, where performance was well below par, both for the State ~d for the School. This phenomenon was exacerbated by the fact that only 6 or 7 students left Year 11 at the end of 1987~ whereas some 20 or so left at the end of Year 11, 1988, removing· f ram the 1989 Year 12 population a number of students\ whose abilities and study habits were such that they would have produced a similar tail if they had continued.

As always the release of TE Scores is accompanied by confusion about the meaning of the score, and rumours about how well or how poorly this School or other schools performed. Investigating these rumours usually puts them to rest and the boy with four Sounds from X State High School who still got 950 turns out to have got the 650 that one would expect. Because of the different nature of the Year 12 population and some stories that some of our past parent9 chqse to circulate in the area around Caboolture, I took the unusual but quite proper step of inviting the Director of the Board of Secondary School Studies to conunent on the checks undertaken by the Board to determine whether any anomalies have occurred in the calculations. The relevant part of his reply follows:

As· part of our quality control routine a wide range of anomaly-detection techniques were used at the end of 1988 to detect the existence - if any · - of anomalies in . levels of achievement and/or TE Scores. Additionally, student performance data on ASAT Books 1 and 2 were collected to assist in the detection of any unaccountable irregularity.

Specifically we looked at a number of measures at various levels. · Firstly, an examina.tion was made at the global level across the State. Then the same measures were calcUlated for each school to generate a list of possible anomalies. Each school was further broken down to subject group l~vel to identify anomalous groups. Finally, schools were encouraged to make submissions to the Authority on individual anomalous cases. The measures that we examined are described briefly below:

correlations between individual student average level of achievement and TE Score

correlations between individual student average level of achievement and individual ASAT score

correlations between school ASAT mean and school mean TE Score

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Headmaster's Report to Council - 7/2/89 - Page 4

comparison of the school's 1987 .~d 1988 distributions of TE Scores ' ~. . r examination of the school's ASAT means. and standard deviations for the past five years

shape of the distribution of SSAs against distributions of relative positions as confirmed by the review process.

I can advise that St Paul's School, in common with all other schools in the State, was studied most carefully and no at:lamaly was detecteq-...with respect to the Board's procedures.

You are ·mo'st welcome to convey to parents of your school the information outlined in. this letter. . I am confident that most - if not all - of the parents would be persuaded that the 'Authority did all it could to see that justice was done as far as humanly possible.

(b) Students of 1989

School has commenced for the year with 781 students, distributed according to the chart below. In addition we have one female student in Year 11 who at~ends Clayfield College for much of .the time, but who wtll be coming to St Paul's on one or two occasions a week to study Chinese. This is an arrangement which has proved quite workaJ:?le in the past with students from s. Margaret's, for example, studying Indonesian.

Secondary Primary .

,.. Year 12 129 Year 7 30 11 139 6 27 10 158 5 25 9 147 8 126

TOT.AL 699 TOTAL 82

Year 11 and Year 12 are comfortably full, with one or two additional students able to be taken if they were to become available, depending upon the selection of subjects they ~hed to study.

Year 10 is too full: the desired number is 150, and the figure of 158 is derived from some expected leavers not going and some unexpected returners.

Year 9 could have three more additional students, and the primary classes are as full as we want them to be.

The problem remains in Year 8, where two last minute withdrawals brought the number down to 126, 24 short of target. This situation will be monitored with the five classes reduced to four by the end of the year if additional students are not found and/or there are any withdrawals. ·

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Headmaster's Report to Council - 7/2/89 - ~age 5

The Development Office has undertaken"~.·· reasonably aggressive campaign of advertising and other information spreading, and has also arranged transport for students from the SaIQ.ford area in response to a number of requests, but it may be too late to see much change over the next few months.

( c) Students for 1g.a:g. qo

Call-up letters are being prepared today inviting parents to confirm the enrolment of their sons for 1990 by Friday March 10. The usual procedures of J7amination (associated also with the award of Scholarships and Bursaries) for students entering Year 8 will be followed~ but a. real question remains given the present level of enrolments as to whether 1989 Year 8 will contain four or five class~s, bearing-in mind that only 30 will be proceeding from our own Year 7 to Year 8. The statistics remain not much changed from those tabled and discussed in detail in the middle of 1988 when our plans for the extended primary were made.

The extension into primary has in these early days seemed to prove most acceptable, with positive connnents being received from parents, students and teachers.

" 4. LEGAL AND INDUSTRIAL MATI'ERS

(a) Occupational Superannuation

The brochures prepared by the managers of the Diocesan Fund and a visit to the staff by Mr Dave Thomas of Suncorp worked well together to achieve an almost 100% enrolment of staff in the Diocesan . Fund, only three staff members opting for the Union-sponsored scheme, QIESS.

(b) QATIS

QATIS has aready given notice by posters in the Common Room that it intends to play its full part in the "restructuring" of Awards during 1989. Information will as usual be passed to Council as it comes to hand.

QATIS and the QTU have also "instructed" their members not to participate in the Board of Secondary School Studies Review Procedures until the State Government agrees to provide a m!leage allowance for participants and the cost of replacement teachers. It remains to be seen·what notice, if any, will be taken of this request. This is an interesting move for two reasons: first that the Union is at least in part acting in the interests of the employer; and secondly that the move comes less than a year after the Union's recognition in the Agreement following the 4% Second Tier negotiations of "the current commitment of Teachers to the work and assessment programs for students in both Board of Secondary School Studies accredited subjects and school based curricula".

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Headmaster's Report to Council - 7/2/89 - Page 6 ,.

( c) overseas Students " ~ . ·"r

There are two changes here which will affect St Paul's. The first is the abolition of the Quota places, and their replacement by a Scholarship system which would appear to indicate that all future overseas students will be, as the majority have been in the ·last two years, "full-fee" students.

The second is the change from 1 July 1989 whereby the State Government, and not the Federal Government, will have the task of determining which educat~onal institutions will be able to accept overseas students. A discussion with the State Minister for Education d~ring the vacation made it quite clear that the State Department intends to compete vigorously to attract full-fee students, to its own institutions, which was not the case in the past. ·

(d) The Education Act

Following the passage of three bills towards the end of 1988, associated with Teacher Registration, what is· now the Board of Senior Secondary School Studies, and the Ministerial Council on Curriculum, the Minister intends to redraft the main Act and to see this through. the House during the autumn session. In discussions with Mr Ellis, Mr Brad Smith and me he has not indicated anything which would cause concern, but the text of the proposed Bill is not yet available for study.

(e) Funding of Independen~ Schools

The Federal Minister has given a number of assurances that a draft paper on the funding of independent schools by the Commonwealth after 1992 will be available early this year for discussion. However, two appointments made by Mr Kaspura of his Department to brief AISQ members towards the end of last year were cancelled because the officers of the Minister's Department did not feel they had been sufficiently briefed themselves. Mr Kaspura is now expected to conduct his briefing in Brisbane sometime in the next two months.

The State Minister assisting the Treasurer, Mr B D Austin, has set up a Working Party to consider the future of State Funding of Independent Schools, and in. particular of a way of avoiding the traditional squabble between the State and Non-state sector which has followed release of recent State Budgets. The Minister has invited me to represent AISQ Schools on this Conunittee, and I shall be attending the first meeting on February 6.

5. THE FOUNDATION

As Members of Council will know from the flying minute circulated towards the end of 1988, the Foundation has now held its first Annual General Meeting. As noted at the beginning of this report plans for the Foundation launch are well in hand and will be the subject of discussion at the end of our meeting.·

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Headmaster's Report to Council - 7/2/89 - Page 7

6. SCHOOL EVALUATION • ~~ . 'f

The many Committees overseeing consideration and implementation of the recormnendations flowing from the Evaluation have gone into aestivation since mid-November, but will re.convene soon. In the meantime the Housemasters have completely revised what we are now calling the "Standing Orders" of the School and will be meeting to put the hopefully finishing touches to their document on February 8. A copy of the draft as it stands at present is enclosed for the information of members of Council.

7. 'nm ASSOCIATIONS

(a) The st'P~ul's Association \

The St Paul's Association held its Annual General Meeting on Monday, November 21. Mr A Hooper, having served the statutory two terms as President has stood down to become. Treasurer, while the former Secretary, Mr G McNamara, takes over as President. The new Secretary is Mr D C Andersen.

(b) Mothers' .Auxiliary "'

The Mothers' Au:Xiliary held its Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, November 9. Mrs M Baird continues as President, with Mrs L Forster as Treasurer and Mrs Case as a reluctant and determinedly interim Secretary.

(c) St Paul's School Old Boys' Association

The Annual General Meeting of this body is scheduled for February 28. The Old Boys' Association has been considering for sometime the .. question of incorporation, in particular relating to concerns associated with its sponsoring of sporting fixtures and especially Rugby matches between the School and old boys who may not necessarily be as fit as they think they are. It will present a proposed new set of rules allowing for incorporation to its Annual General Meeting. I was somewhat surprised, therefore, to discover at the end of the vacation that the Justice Department had allowed the incorporation of the body, presumably, although it is not stated· on the Certificate, pending the adoption of this new acceptable Constitution and Rules. A copy of the proposed Constitution is enclosed for the information of members of Council, and any proposed changes to it would have to be notified promptly so that they could be considered and if necessary incorporated in the version for adoption on 28 February.

All three bodies continue to have willing Committees who have in their minds and hearts the best for the School. None of the meetings held since I last reported to Council, however, has done anything to calm my fears their dwindling attendance, and at times tenuous links with their "members". The outgoing President of the St Paul's Association, for example, sent a separate mailing to all current 1988 and intending 1989 parents urging support at the Annual General Meeting, but still failed to attract a quorum.

The group of Past Mothers will hold its first meeting for the year on March 2, when they are planning a cruise on the PW Kookaburra Queen.

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Headmaster's Report to Council - 7/2/89 ~ Page 8

8. COMING EVENTS

A copy of a calendar for the Semester has already been distributed to members of Council. The only major change which has been found necessary following the publication of this document has been the transfer of the Secondary swimming carnival from February 14 to February 15.

9. DATE OF NEXT MEETING

This i~.scheduled for Tuesday March 7 at 4.00 pm at the School.

GA Case\ Headroaste\r

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