Links
As a school community, we are always looking for ways to strengthen learning and ensure every student has the confidence and skills they need to succeed. Our recent strategic review has helped us reflect on what is working well and where we can grow across our academic program. It highlighted the value of increasing lesson time for Mathematics and English, placing greater emphasis on explicit teaching, and ensuring our curriculum builds strong foundations for success in the senior years.
As a result of our recent review, we are making some important changes specifically to our English and Mathematics programs in 2026:
The school is also committed to the Footscray Learning Precinct, sharing best practices and ensuring smooth transitions from primary to secondary education. We look forward to sharing expertise across the precinct.
These changes are an exciting step forward. They will provide students with more structured and engaging learning opportunities, while ensuring that teachers are well-supported to deliver high-quality lessons with a focus on explicit teaching. With these foundations in place and your continued support, we are confident our students will thrive.
If you have questions, please feel free to contact the Principal Team at the school.
On Tuesday, 2nd September I joined Kate Hall, MP Footscray, Nic Price, Learning Specialist, High Achievers and Student Voice/Agency and seven students on a special visit to the new Footscray Hospital site.
During the tour, we explored several areas of the hospital and gained an exciting preview of what the completed facility will look like. The students thoroughly enjoyed the experience and came away with a stronger understanding of the scale, purpose, and opportunities the new hospital will bring to our community.
Tony Bates, Secretary of the Department of Education, visited on Friday, 29 August. Jessie Hand and Jen Briggs, Principals of Footscray City and Footscray Primary Schools respectively, along with Ashley Duggan from the Footscray Learning Precinct, and our SWVR Regional Director, Chris Thompson, were also in attendance.
Tony spent time speaking with teachers, students, and leadership teams, gaining a deeper understanding of the collaborative work taking place across the precinct.
A highlight Tony’s visit was exploring The Farm, and he was especially impressed by our Year 9 students who are propagating indigenous plants for a revegetation project along the Maribyrnong River.
I wish all students a wonderful break and look forward to welcoming them back on Monday, 6 October.
Jillian English
Principal
View the Term 4 Calendar below.
Congratulations to all of the students who performed in the Kinnear Theatre for the Spring Ensembles Concert on Monday September 15.
The program began with the rich sounds of the 15 member string ensemble, ably led by teachers Leslie Gyori at the Keyboard and Jenny Skinner on Cello. Next came Nicholas Costanzo directing the Pilgrim Community Band, made up of guitar, bass, drums, percussion, brass, woodwind and voice students.
The Brass Ensemble consisting of most of Marc Matthew’s trumpet and trombone students followed before the addition of some extra students to form the Barkly Rookies band – all students in their first or second year of playing their wind instruments.
The final item on the program was the Barkly Community band, a similar line-up to the Pilgrim group of the same name, but with six singers. This group has been rehearsing and performing regularly this year, and their experience showed as the audience tapped their feet to the infectious grooves and well known melodies.
The next big music event will be Kindred Bands Night on Monday October 13. Tickets are available (for non-performing over 18’s) here.
As Term 3 ends and our interschool SSV program concludes for our divisional rounds of competition, Term 4 brings us the regional round of events for any winning teams that have progressed. Yes, you bet, FHS is busy next term.
Click HERE for the list of the students representing FHS at the events below.
Best of luck to our teams representing FHS at the regional level. Happy term break. GO FHS!
Recently, the Year 7s played table tennis, and the boys’ junior futsal took to the court at Derrimut.
The girls’ table tennis team made the final, with all 4 teams growing and developing as the day went on, learning the game and the strategies that evolve.
The boys futsal team played excellently in all 3 games, missing the final on goals scored to Southern Cross with a drawn game 2-2, and big wins over Creekside and Braybrook.An unlucky way to miss out on what was a great effort by the junior boys.
Well done on all who represented FHS today, excellent display of our school pillars.
Well done to all 70 athletes and helpers last week at Divisional Athletics. Beautiful day of sun and success for all of our participants with 1st, 2nd and 3rd ribbons at the plenty. Superb display of skills on show on the track and field with a long list of regional qualifiers, please click the link below and put your hands together for our regional athletes taking the track and field on Wednesday, October 8, @ Aberfeldie Aths track, Week 1, Term 4.
Qualifiers: Click HERE
The FHS community got behind Wear It Purple Day 2025, which encourages folks to wear purple to show their support for young people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, or otherwise gender and sexually diverse. The 2025 theme of Wear It Purple day was “Bold Voices, Bright Futures,” which emphasises the importance of empowering LGBTQIA+ youth to express themselves and advocate for positive change.
FHS celebrated WIPD on Friday, 29 August in style with wonderful whole of school Initiatives, including Emma Pollock’s call out and creation of a slideshow, regarding what Wear it Purple Day means to FHS students. Congratulations to the students from each campus whose responses snagged them a Sun Theatre movie voucher.
There was lunchtime fairy bread in abundance, coordinated by the Wellbeing /Inclusion Team, made by students, along with activities of adding purple glitter glamour to the many students who supported the day and those who wore a splash of purple.
FHS Wellbeing /Inclusion Team
On Wednesday 27th August, the school hosted Complete Works Theatre to perform the play Medea by Euripides to the Year 11 EAL cohort, Year 10 Drama and Year 11/12 Theatre Studies.
Here are some quotes from the Year 11 EAL students:
Rahmat: The play was amazing and really helped me with learning and memorizing the quotes. And all of the actors played each role very well and similar to the play of medea which will most likely help me with the sac since I can remember the play through them and remember each step of the play.
“A theatre company came to our school and played ‘Medea’ which was quite interesting which has helped me to sink in every of the quotes in the play.”
Evelyn: I had a great time on Wednesday. The performance felt really powerful and I’m grateful we had the chance to see it on stage.
Helena: This was the first time I experienced watching a play in theatre. From my point of view, it was the most amazing experience I have ever had. The play becomes more powerful and inspiring than just reading the text from the book.
Damjan: ”It was really fun to see the play we read and analysed live, the actors really brought it to life.”
Raien: That was a great acting on Wednesday, I hope I have an opportunity to see that again.
May: Thank you for the professional appearance with the roles on Wednesday > Overall, the play “ Medea” was so successful and a disappointing performance!
Filsan: I had a Great time
This term the Premier’s Reading Challenge wrapped up for another year and once again we had fantastic engagement from our students. This year, 75 students across all three campuses voluntarily signed up for the program. Between them, they read 1172 books, and contributed many excellent book reviews to the school’s library catalogue. We’ve collected these reviews here for you to read if you wish.
A celebratory pizza party was held at Pilgrim Library last Tuesday for the Junior students who completed the Reading Challenge, while the Senior participants received their choice of a tasty treat. We look forward to running the challenge again next year.
As we approach the holidays, we’d like to remind you that students can still access many library services anytime while off campus.
Our online catalogue can be found at this link: https://au.accessit.online/FTS00/ .
Students can login using their school FHS google account, while other community members can enjoy limited access using a guest account. Our catalogue provides online access to ebooks and audiobooks, a variety of digital news sources, research databases, reading recommendations and so much more…
Here’s a handy guide for how to search, check your loans, renew overdue items, reserve books and add reviews.
If you have any questions or need help with renewals or digital access, please get in touch with us at fhslibrary@footscray.vic.edu.au
Happy holidays and happy reading!
From the FHS Library Team
Friends of Footscray High ran the snack bar at the whole-school musical Mama Mia in July. Thanks to everyone who volunteered for the seven performances – a big team effort. Money raised benefits the school (see below) and having a snack bar helped create a fun, buzzy vibe at every show.
Friends of Footscray High raises money all year through activities like the Mama Mia snack bar mentioned above, the wonderful Chefs’ Dinner event, the Scouts Raffle, and the election day sausage sizzle. It channels the funds back into the school via its small grants scheme, where students or teachers can apply for a $2000 grant to improve the school. We received 14 applications to our recent call-out. It was heartening to read such great ideas from both staff and students – thanks to everyone who applied. We have selected three winning applications, and will announce these soon.
All parents and carers are welcome to participate in Friends of Footscray High by dropping in to our monthly meetings, volunteering at events, or helping in other ways. Come meet other parents passionate about supporting our fabulous school. Our next meeting is 7 pm, Tuesday, 14 October. Click here for info about Friends of Footscray High or email friendsoffootscrayhighschool@gmail.com
Last week, two classes of Year 10 Media students attended an excursion to ACMI (supervised by Kat McLeod, Angella Liu and Rae Macardy). We were lucky to have a private film screening of ‘Run Lola Run’ in ACMI’s cinema and then we visited ‘The Story of Moving Image’ exhibition.
Year 9 FHS students rotated through a range of ‘Alcohol and Other Drugs’ Community Related Services, and FHS Health Teacher Sessions as part of the ‘Keeping Safe’: Alcohol and Other Drugs Expo on Thursday 4 September 2025 at the Barkly Campus.
Many thanks to our Health Teachers, Robbie and Blake, and all the following services who came on the day to run sessions: Red Frogs on ‘Party Safe’, Ambulance Victoria, Vic Police, MCC Youth Services, Western Bulldogs, CoHealth, Adolescent Community Programs, Drug Health Services, and Western Health.
Thank you to Alison and Tania for making delicious muffins to help fuel the Session Holders who ran multiple student sessions, and many thanks to all the other FHS Junior Campus staff who supported the extensive planning and running of the Expo
Great first week down on the Maribyrnong for our 45 new rowers. We have seen some fantastic burpees, push ups, ergo technique and today we even started to set up boats on air beds!
2 sessions down and 3 to go and we can’t wait to see you all again next week.
FHS joined other schools across Australia to share the R U OK? connect, reflect, and ask, ‘are you OK?’ message and encourage more life changing conversations, not only on R U OK? Day, but every day.
FHS wellbeing staff supported our Social Work Placement Students to host lunch time events at all FHS Campuses during the week of R-U-OK Day on Thursday, 11 September with the 2025 focus on connecting with those around us and supporting anyone facing life’s challenges and “Ask R U OK?”.
The students embraced writing positive messages, affirmations, and mental health tips as part of a school community post it note Initiative that yes, did include sweet rewards!
Warm regards
FHS Wellbeing and Inclusion Team
This term, our students have been investigating plastic pollution and microplastics – tiny plastic particles less than 5 mm in size that form when larger plastics break down. Though difficult to see with the naked eye, these fragments can have a significant impact on ecosystems. With the help of the Saturna imaging tool, students analysed sand samples and detected microplastics in ways that would not have been possible without this advanced technology.
This was a fantastic opportunity for students to experience real-world data analysis and connect their classroom learning with global environmental challenges. A big thank you to Friends of Footscray High for generously providing the grant money to purchase this specialised equipment from Canada. Your support helps us give students unique, hands-on experiences that inspire curiosity and critical thinking.
“Seize it, Snip it, Bin it” is a conservation campaign encouraging people to protect platypuses by picking up litter, especially loopy items like hair ties and rubber bands, and cutting any loops before disposing of them properly in bins to prevent them from reaching waterways and harming wildlife.
September is a critical time because it is platypus breeding season, making them more vulnerable to entanglement in loopy litter.
On 16/925 39 students from Pilgrim and Barkly Campus walked to the brand new Whitten Oval to attend the Western Bulldogs AFLW clinic. When we arrived, we went inside a room upstairs and had a few minutes to eat and enjoy the stunning view of the Whitten Oval from the balcony. After that we listened to a speech by Lachie who worked with Indigenous footy players. It was really great to listen to what he did for the footy community. We learn the contribution that he makes for all the footy players to achieve their dream of being a footy player.
When all the questions were answered, we walked down to the Whitten Oval to have a kick around with a footy with our friends. We got to play some games like hand – balling the ball into a target to win a footy. It was a great experience to test our footy skills with everyone!
After all the games wrapped up, we got to do a tour of the facilities. During the tour, Luna – A Western Bulldogs staff member – explained what the different places are used for such as kitchen, office admin, gym, museum ( which had all the trophies and special monuments). I learn’t all the different places and the different jobs that happen in the facilities.
It was a really fun and packed day. Even though we couldn’t meet any footy players, I enjoyed everything we did. During the experience I learnt the different programs that people could train for footy, such as Next Gen (for multicultural people) and programs that anyone who wants to be a footy player can attend . Everyone works together to make sure everything is well! Western Bulldogs do a great job for the community by making sure people can achieve their dreams of being a footy player and making sure everything goes smoothly in all the facilities. It was a great experience overall for everyone!
Ayantu G, 7C
This week teachers met to present their work in their Professional Learning Community. An important fact about Footscray High School is that it is not just the students who are learning. Their teachers are also meeting together regularly in collaborative groups to work on sharpening their classroom practices to improve every student’s learning. We call this our Professional Learning Community.
This year, our teacher groups have focussed on the new Victorian Teaching and Learning Model. The model was developed by the government in consultation with the Australian Education Research Organisation and uses insights from school leaders and classroom teachers as well as insights from cognitive psychology and neuroscience about how the human brain learns new things. A lot of practices from the model are already place in classrooms across Victoria but we have been working with this research evidence to improve the consistency and quality of our teaching across Footscray High School. If you’d like to know more about the model there is a great two page parents guide available at this link which explains how it works and also gives you some tips about how to support student learning at home using these same research-tested ideas. The model is clearly focussed on Explicit Teaching, that is having a very clear plan of what the students will learn, sharing those goals with the students, explicitly explaining the new material and checking carefully whether students have learned what was planned.
We have had a range of groups working on developing shared classroom practice this year, and presenting to each other this week to share that important work. Some groups have worked on classroom organisational strategies and routines, others on ways of checking students’ understanding of the content that has been taught, others on routines for practice and review to make sure students retain what they have learnt for the long term. This has involved teachers experimenting with some new ideas in class so we thank our students for being our test subjects as we work out how best to use these techniques here at Footscray High School.
Into 2026 we will continue to learn more and improve our classroom practices with a view to developing a comprehensive Footscray High School Instructional Model which will lay out for teachers, students and families how we ensure every student maximises their opportunities to learn in every subject here at the school.
Dan Sullivan and John Box
Pilgrim and Barkly Campus Principals.