St Mary’s Campus
St. Mary’s Campus offers an exciting and challenging program for Year 9 students. The curriculum has been designed to have close links with the local area and allow students to be active and engaged learners. With this aim in mind, the curriculum focuses on students’ understanding of themselves, their community and their world. A significant aspect of the St. Mary’s Campus program is learning through experience. Students are able to participate in a variety of experiences throughout their semester at the St. Mary’s Campus, including two Outdoor Education camps, excursions and immersion days.
The Integrated Studies curriculum is comprised of several modules that focus on building students’ knowledge and skills from a range of learning areas including English, Religious Education, Humanities, Science, The Arts and Technology. In addition to Integrated Studies, subjects such as Mathematics, Languages (French, Italian and Japanese) and Health and Physical Education are taught as stand-alone subjects.
A central feature of Integrated Studies is inquiry based learning. Students investigate areas of interest that are linked to classroom studies. This learning style gives students responsibility and ownership over their work and their learning. An example of inquiry learning in practice can be seen through the Action Inquiry Based Learning Task that students complete towards the end of their semester at the St. Mary’s Campus. Through this task, students investigate a topic of their choice and take action to make a difference in their world.
The Senate is the student leadership group at the St. Mary’s Campus. Students apply for a position in the Senate and then present to the entire St. Mary’s cohort, including both teachers and students, on why they should be elected. Working in collaboration with each other, the teachers at St. Mary’s then consider students’ previous achievements and adherence to College expectations before electing the students to their positions of leadership.
This leadership structure aims to empower student voice, allow young people to take ownership of their environment, and engage with others in the community. The Senate works closely with the Campus Co-Coordinator to organize and run assemblies, special days (Resilience Day and Sustainability Day), liturgies and various extra-curricular activities at St. Mary’s.
The Senate is run as an executive government, with the elected students taking on a variety of leadership positions. The Senate is led by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister and is made up of Ministers who are responsible for their own portfolios. The portfolios that students take on include Catholic Identity, Environment and Sustainability, Social Justice, Wellbeing, Multimedia and Photography, Music and Performing Arts, Sport and Recreation, Academia, Science and Technology and Transport. At the beginning of their semester as a Senator, students set specific goals relating to their individual portfolio that they intend to achieve. With the support and guidance of staff, students pursue these goals throughout their time at St. Mary’s Campus.
