News

Dear Parents/Carers,

In 2024 the following vaccines will be offered:

If your child is in Year 7 or Year 10 this year, you can now provide online consent for their routine school vaccinations.

In Year 7, students are offered free vaccines for diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (dTpa) and human papillomavirus (HPV). In Year 10, students are offered the meningococcal ACWY vaccine.

Vaccination will only be provided at school if consent has been received.

How to provide consent:

To complete online consent for your child’s school vaccinations, visit: https://nswhealth.service-now.com/school

Follow the steps to log in to your existing ServiceNSW account. This is the same account you may already use to renew your driver’s licence. If you don’t have a ServiceNSW account, refer to ServiceNSW to create one.

Update or confirm your personal details in ServiceNSW as required.

Complete the School Vaccination Consent Form for your child/ren. You will need to:

1. a) Enter your child’s personal details
2. b) Provide the Medicare card details for you and your child
3. c) Read the linked Parent Information Sheet and privacy statement
4. d) Provide consent

If you or your child do not have a Medicare card, consent can still be provided by requesting a paper-based consent form directly from your child’s school.

The benefits of providing consent online:

• easily update your child’s details
• receive SMS and/or email notifications when vaccinations are given

faster upload of vaccination records to the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR).

For more information on routine school vaccinations, please visit

www.health.nsw.gov.au/schoolvaccination.

If you require information in your language, please visit:

http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/…/school_vaccination…

Last week we welcomed our new Year 7 students to the College.  There were a lot of nervous excitement as the students walked through our gates.

Here are some photos from the morning.

We look forward to sharing some more Year 7 moments over the coming weeks.

Ivy R of Year 9 was recently awarded the title of International Maths Challenge Elitist!

The College would like to congratulate Ivy on such a wonderful achievement.

Students who score between 85 and 95%ile in their grade are awarded the title of Elitist while those scoring above 95%ile are awarded the title of Champion.

This is amazing news for Ivy and our school.  She is the only student on the Central Coast in her year group to compete in the second round of the International Maths Olympiad and to score such a high result too.

Congratulations!

Each year, the Holy Father asks for our prayers for a specific intention each month. You are invited to answer the Holy Father’s request and to join with many people worldwide in praying for February’s intention, which is for the terminally ill.

“We pray that those with a terminal illness, and their families, receive the necessary physical and spiritual care and accompaniment.”

It has become the norm in many schools that meaningful learning tasks become few and far between in the last couple of weeks of the year.  I appreciate that the learning tasks might change and there might be some variation to the normal routine but the quality of the teaching should never be compromised even as we draw near to our summer holidays.

There is always an unspoken tension between the perception that nothing of importance is happening in class and a significant spike in student absenteeism at this time of year.  At St Brigid’s students already finish a week before their counterparts in DoE schools, it is imperative that our kids attend right through to the end.

This is a good example where staff, students and parents need to work together.  Many parents will be faced with countless reasons as to why their son or daughter should pull up stumps a little bit early in 2023.  Your job is to stand your ground and guide them to make the right decision.  Staff have traditionally been faced with small student numbers in the last week and a stigma that real lessons have been abandoned for the year.  It’s our job to provide high quality, meaningful learning right through to the end.

The kids will rise to the bar we set for them.  Let’s ensure we have high expectations for attendance at any time and that absolutely includes the next seven school days.  Learning manifests itself in so many ways, the discipline of attending school when it might be the last thing they want to do, will serve them well into the future.  It won’t be the last time they are faced with doing something they’d prefer not to.

Will they cop out and take the easy option or do what’s right and persevere.

On Wednesday night we held our CAPA (Creative and Performing Arts) Showcase.

The evening was a chance for our Stage 4 and 5 students to present some of the creative projects they’ve worked on throughout the year.

Artwork displayed on the evening demonstrated some of the outstanding work students have completed in the units ‘Gothic Gargoyles’, ‘Momento Mori’, and ‘Elements of Ceramics’.

The Stage 5 Drama class performed a number of hilarious items including the short plays ‘Mt Kilimanjaro’ and ‘After Dinner’. These Drama students were also recognised for their 1st place award in the Religious Creative Arts Prize run by Catholic Schools Broken Bay. Their play ‘Compassion and Forgiveness’ was a thought-provoking work on the theme of compassion.

A number of Stage 4, 5 and 6 music students performed songs by Billie Eilish, the Foo Fighters, Silk Sonic and Stephen Sanchez. These performances demonstrated some of the hard work these music students have put into their respective instruments throughout the year.

As part of the evening, we had a presentation of our ‘Videos for Change’.  All entries were thoughtful and critical commentaries on various societal issues.  The winners were Olivia Castelli and Zara Hepplewhite for their video ‘Stronger Together’.  Runners up were Emily Cronan and Lachlan Brain for their video ‘Mental Health’ and Ruby Peters and Chelsea Shoesmith won the People’s Choice award for their video ‘Broken Bloodline (Home)’.

On the whole, the evening was highly engaging and showcased some of the incredible talent that we have at the College.