PIN OAK ISSUE 70: TERM 2, MAY 25, 2018 OXLEY COLLEGE DISCO PUBLIC GONSKI SPEAKING 2.0 Contents HABITAT FOR WILDLIFE Dear Oxley families, Big Issue Would you like it if every Australian insect and possum species became 3 critically endangered? If you wouldn’t, you live in the Wingecarribee Headmaster’s Report Shire and you love native animals then read this! (Read it anyway!) 4 Habitat For Wildlife is about providing a garden that Australian species can live in. All you have to do is make small changes to your backyard 5 Headmaster’s Report to increase the number of birds, insects or possums living in your garden! You can do this by planting more trees, flowers and other 6 K - 6 News plants. Make sure they are native otherwise they might not be suitable for the animals. Also, your garden will look and sound better than 7 More K-6 anybody else’s in your street! You can make your garden bird-friendly! Here are some plants that provide food or nesting grounds for native Feature Article birds: 1. Hakea Gibbosa 2. Lilly Pilly 3. Small Gumtree There are lots 8 more you can get in your local gardening store. Doing this doesn’t Deputy Head Reports just attract animals, it attracts people too! If you do this, then more 10 people will want to have fun in your garden! Thank you for reading 11 Take Inspiration this article about our amazing animals!!! Louisa Hogan-Baldo (Year 3) 12 Old Oxleyan 13 What’s happening...in the World 14 Gallery 15 Calendar 16 Newsflash Pin Oak Team Student Editorial Team Jemima Taylor, Jade Gilles, Tully Mahr, Maya Chance, Hugh Corbett, Liam O’Connell, Kiara Rochaix, Sam Crowley, Cooper Barker, Lily Magill, Mack Kane, Ava OXLEY COLLEGE PRESENTS Lambie, Eva Macevicius , Izzy Moore, Brad Worthington, Peggy Holmwood, Bridgett Drewet, Lily Hogan WHERE IN THE WORLD IS FRANK SPARROW? Head Designers A play by Angela Betzien Cameron Grice, Juliette Swain Designers Bree Feary, Aisha May, Holly Hutchings Head of Marketing and PR Emma Calver Staff Editor Beattie Lanser Oxley College Railway Road, Burradoo, NSW, 2576. Ph: 4861 1366 [email protected] WEDNESDAY 30 MAY, THURSDAY 31 MAY, FRIDAY 1 JUNE 2018 7.30pm HOSKINS HALL, OXLEY COLLEGE TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR $15 ADULTS, $10 STUDENTS 02 Cook it with Love What springs into your head when you think of Many young people end up living on friend’s couches a homeless person? Is it someone sitting on the because they can’t afford a place of their own, or side of the road with a sign, covering their face and they all live together in very crowded places. asking for some money? Is it someone sleeping Lots of these people may especially be struggling on a piece of cardboard in Sydney in a doorway, to have meals – and that’s where Year 7 students maybe with their dog next to them? from Oxley come in. This is what most people might think of when For the last few years we have been cooking meals they hear the word ‘homeless’ but that’s not all to supply to the Uniting Church in Bowral who homelessness is. In fact, people who have to sleep distribute them through a lunch for the community. outside – in a park, under a bridge, or in a doorway The Year 7 students cook two meals each per year – are only 7% of Australia’s homeless population. so we provide 120 meals to be served up to anyone So, who are the others? What other kinds of who might need one. This is part of our Service ‘homelessness’ are there? Learning. 1. People who have to live in housing provided I spoke to the co-ordinators this week who said how by crisis centres, domestic violence shelters and much they appreciated the meals cooked by the other places. These are people who’d be living on Oxley students and how grateful they are to have the streets if organisations like Wayside Chapel, a meal in the freezer to give whenever someone Red Cross and other places weren’t looking after needs one. They told the story of a woman from them. Bowral who came this week and had eaten no food at all. Because of the meal provided by one of our 2. People who are ‘couch surfing’ – this means students in Year 7, she was able to go home with people who are living with friends temporarily, something home cooked and warm to eat. So when moving around a lot because they don’t have a you are cooking your meal for Service Learning this home of their own. year, think about where it’s going and how you 3. People living in boarding houses, which are could be really helping someone who might not a bit like a really cheap hotel and very basic. They have eaten a good healthy meal for a long time. can be a bit like a backpackers. 4. People living in very very crowded places – Brydie Taylor (Year 7) like other people’s homes, or flats that might only have one bedroom for six people. In our own Wingecarribee Shire, we probably don’t think there are many homeless people because you don’t often see people sleeping rough on the streets. But this doesn’t mean homelessness isn’t a problem – think of the other categories. People in our area find it hard to afford rent as rent in the Southern Highlands is growing; people with pets find it very hard to get rentals that allow animals. 03 HEADMASTER’S REPORT GONSKI 2.0 I have read most of the Gonski report now (this is the Should we trust the test? Does it properly test how sort of reason it is risky to have me at dinner parties capable, skilled, inventive, employment-ready and for entertaining conversation) and it certainly is an curious students are? Its co-ordinator Andreas important, holistic and even brave document about the Schleicher indicated at a conference I was at last year future of our education system in Australia. It is not that the tests are quite different from year to year and about funding. Instead it is about how to get quality so comparing one set of results to another over fifteen learning for all of the students. Despite my reservations years is problematic. I am impressed by the way that David Gonski and others Why did we fall? The report briefly indicates that it is synthethise such a gigantic and multifaceted topic (all our ‘outcomes’ system in which we mandate how much of education) into something resembling a cohesive each student learns each year (with the implication programme. I am enthusiastic about some areas, but of ‘this much and no more’). However, few teachers I really quite cautious about some others. Let me explain know felt like an ‘outcome’ was a ‘ceiling’ - it was more further, just in case you too want to be seen as an of a midpoint. Many teachers half ignored them anyway entertainment risk at dinner parties. – quite luckily it turns out as we are being told now that Fall in league tables. it was the source of many of our problems. So I don’t really buy it as enough of an explanation. It begins by demonstrating how far we have fallen in international league tables in Maths, English and There is also, very concerningly, almost no analysis of Science in just fifteen years. (from 3rd in the world to why the high performing countries rose. Do they have 16th in literacy, 7th to 25th in Mathematics and 4th to wonderful effective, utopian and smartness-inducing 14th in Science). In the interim, other countries such programmes that we missed? Or are the kids being as Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland, Chinese Taipei and coached in narrow, co-curricular free schools and Estonia have done extremely well. But there is little then hothoused in joyless tutoring centres until late in analysis of: the night in order to feed a high stakes treadmill of test taking? If it is the former then I lament our lost • Whether we trust the test opportunity, if the latter then I celebrate our decline. • Why we fell I do wish that more had been done to study our ‘competition’. • Why other countries rose. 04 2) Recommendations Missed opportunities There are three priorities, twenty three recommendations There is much more that I could say, but I will restrict and seventeen findings in Gonski 2.0. In short they say myself to two areas I would have liked to see more that every child should achieve one year of growth for of (acknowledging at the same time that it is the each year of school, we have to train children to be easiest thing in the world to complain ‘You didn’t say creative, connected and engaged for the twenty first this’. Overall I think the report has done a startlingly century and that the school system should be flexible good job at bringing so many educational trends and and innovative enough to achieve this observations together). My favourite recommendation of the twenty three is the • It is easy to expect what the school system is one about strengthening students ‘general capabilities’ supposed to deliver, but I think we can have more as well as their content subjects and skills. These expectations of what reasonable children are supposed capabilities include their critical thinking, their creative to do in return. We can expect them to work hard, thinking and their ethical development.