Curriculum Overview

MacKillop College offers students a broad, comprehensive and well-balanced curriculum. We endeavour to meet the needs of our students and our community with a contemporary 21st Century curriculum.  In the delivery of such a curriculum we have an emphasis on higher order skills for problem solving, research, creativity and innovation. Intensive learning of this nature requires excellent access to on-line resources, the freedom to spend extended periods of time on task, availability to a range of expert teachers and the freedom to access resources in the community. We endeavour to do this.

We believe that all students have a right to education freely, equally and with concern shown for their individuality. Our curricula, therefore, needs to provide for and encourage the full and rounded development of all students. We are committed to each student’s intellectual, emotional, spiritual, physical and psychological growth and ultimate well being.
In our curriculum Years 7 to 10 students are offered the opportunity to study a broad range of subjects from the ten domains:

• Religious Education;
• The Arts - Creative and Performing;
• Design, Creativity and Technology (DCT);
• English;
• Health and Physical Education;
• Humanities;
• Information and Communication Technology (ICT);
• LOTE - French, Indonesian, Italian and Japanese;
• Mathematics; and
• Science

Within the subjects in the aforementioned domains we incorporate the Physical, Personal and Social Strand (including Interpersonal Development, Personal Learning and Civics and Citizenship) and the Inter-disciplinary Strand (including Communication and Thinking).

At Year 9, all students are offered the opportunity to learn in a unique, alternative program for 6 months.  This occurs at St Mary’s Campus in Werribee South.  Here students are faced with an integrated  curriculum in which they:

• Learn through experience;
• Face an inquiry based, negotiated and student centred curriculum; and
• Engage in meaningful community actions.

 
Students in Years 11 and 12 are also offered a broad range of units from the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL), the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) and/or the Vocational Education and Training (VET) courses which have all been accredited by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority.

To cater for the rich diversity of students' needs, we also offer:

• Gifted & Talent Development Program;
• Enhancement and Acceleration;
• Personalised Learning Programs potentially involving Literacy and Numeracy Support; Vocational Preparation Programs; Integration; New Arrivals; and English as a Second Language (ESL); and

.