Hi everyone

I am in the process of linking up two teachers and their classes to write to you. One is a senior school English class the other a 4th year IT class.

I thought I might answer some of your questions in the meantime.

Our school uniform is white and dark blue, the students designed it themselves a few years ago. it is a choice of a polo top or white short sleeved shirt, no tie or blazer. Most student wear shorts or skirts for most of the year. It never snows here! We have a separate PE uniform.

We do 5 periods a day each about an hour, we start at 8.40 and finish at 3. We have school 40 weeks a year.

We study in 7 areas, English, Maths, Science, Society and Environment, Technology (IT, Home Ec and Design and tech) Arts (art, music, drama, dance media and music) and PE. Can you spot which subject we don't do?

The school is 30 years old and has 600 odd kids from 12 years old to 17.

Students must stay on campus all day so they cannot go out for lunch, most bring sandwiches and eat in the gardens, a lot also buy from the canteen, which only sells healthy food. that is a law here. So no chips or fizzy drinks.

The canteen is really an area to buy food with room for 12 odd kids to sit down it is not really necessary to eat inside here due to our climate. It is a great new facility maybe one of the kids will send some photos if you ask them. We have had 6.5 million dollars spent here recently to do the place up.

The students skateboard, go to the beach, play sport or go to the shops in their spare time, I am sure they will be able to tell you more.

Most of our kids are local area intake so yes they live locally.

As far as being an Eco school, we are heading that way, so we would like some help and advice from you. We are currently upgrading our science labs to have two industry standard labs to train students in college certificates. One will be a rock sampling lab, as we do a lot of mining in WA, iron ore, copper, zinc aluminium gold etc. So a lot of Eco stuff has to happen to rehabilitate the area afterwards. We work with the local mine here and planted 12 000 trees last year for them and worked with the council to save the local river. Our kids have to do 20 hours community service in 3rd year.

The other lab will be wet for soil and water testing and aqua and horticulture and hydroponics.

We have solar panels fitted which we haven't used yet but will do soon for testing and teaching purposes.

Best wishes to all of you, hope to hear from you soon. It is going to be 36 degrees here today that is almost 100. So the air con is on. I will be having a BBQ for tea tonight what will you guys be doing and how is the weather?

Best wishes

Mr C