The ‘Every Minute Counts’ Initiative

18 August 2022

Whether it’s late to school or late to class, recently it’s become apparent that tardiness can be a problem amongst some of our Senior School students. The House Leader Team have been working hard to combat this, encouraging students to go straight to their classes while the music is playing, patrolling the corridors and shepherding students to morning PaLM time. However, it seems that more needed to be done in this space. Therefore, the House Leader Team have enacted the ‘Every Minute Counts’ Initiative.

This initiative aims to help students understand that every minute missed in class is a minute missed of learning. Often, when we ask students why they are late, they will say to us ‘Miss/Sir, I was only 3/4/5 minutes late’. However, when we add up these minutes, they turn into a much larger amount of time, with some students as late as 3 or 4 hours over the academic year. In fact, many students were shocked at how quickly these minutes added up to a larger number!

Last week, we asked students to ‘make up’ these minutes outside of school hours, staying back at school or coming into the College on the recent Student Free Day. Students were given the opportunity for private study, and to utilise this time to study the content they may have missed by being tardy.

Of course, punctuality is not only important at school; we believe it to be an important life skill that these young people can carry with them into the future. Certainly, for some of our students with part-time jobs, being continuously late for their shifts may have disastrous consequences.

We thank parents for their support of this initiative and encourage you to speak with your son or daughter about their punctuality. By implementing this initiative, we hope that students will remember daily that ‘every minute counts.’