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At FHS, we approach the curriculum through two fundamental questions;
For example, what can we know about ancient history, mathematics, or science and how can we use this knowledge to better understand and to provide solutions for emerging changes in our world and beyond?
FHS seeks to enact a future-focussed learning experience in every classroom for every student and our curriculum provides the basis for this. For us, a future focussed curriculum is one that draws on the rich traditions of the past in all disciplines of knowledge, but that gazes forward to identify the big questions that confront us as a species and world, and that provides a framework in which we can adapt to, and tackle those questions at a local level. The Victorian Curriculum provides the framework from which we can contextualise learning experiences for our students and community with the view of supporting them to become qualified, socialised, and autonomous young people that feel a moral sense of responsibility for each other and the world.
We get to know our students in Year 7 and introduce them to the foundational learning behaviours and experiences that will support them to flourish at Footscray High School, including a focus on growth mindset and social emotional learning. Students engage in a broad curriculum program are supported at their point of need in the skills and knowledge of all learning areas of the Victorian Curriculum. They explore the pedagogy of inquiry and the benefits of it as a mode of learning and as a way to improve their immediate world. Students from both junior campuses experience scaffolded inquiry together in Community STEAM for one day a week for one semester, both on campus, and in the community. The Year 7 and 8 program is mirrored across both the Barkly and Pilgrim Campuses.
In Year 9, students deploy the skills, knowledge and capabilities developed over the previous two years in an increasingly self-driven program allowing them to tailor their experience to suit their learning needs, passions, and future aspirations. Footscray High School offers a bespoke Year 9 Program that is responsive to the needs of students at this stage of their schooling. Students’ sphere of influence expands in their inquiry work in year 9, as they continue engaging in full day ‘Community Inquiry’ units that take them into the local community and beyond. They also undertake week-long intensive units that provide them with authentic learning environments both on campus and in the community. Students also engage in a ‘rural intensive program’ that takes students into the wilderness for a week long ‘survival camp’. Year 9 students graduate their junior campus imbued with the four pillars of the FHS, and with the skills, knowledge, capabilities to flourish at the senior school in whichever pathway they choose.
A key element of this stage at Footscray High School is the students’ transition from their junior campus’ into the newly remodelled learning environment at the senior Kinnear Campus. Lead by our senior transition team, students are supported to reflect on their learning in the first three years at FHS to map out what their chosen pathway in the senior years and beyond will look like, with an even broader range of electives available for students to choose, in addition to their core subjects. Year 10 units are very much modelled on VCE units, providing students with learning experiences and expectations that align closely with year 11 and 12. Students have the opportunity of engaging in VCE units while in Year 10.Subjects and Time Allocation (Sessions)