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 21st century skills such as creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration.

Learning of this nature requires access to challenging pedagogy, on-line resources, the freedom to spend extended periods on a task, availability to a range of expert teachers, and the freedom to access resources in the community, which is something we prioritise very highly.

We believe that all students have a right to an education: freely, equally and with concern shown for their individuality. Our curricula, therefore, need 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 wellbeing.

In our curriculum, Years 7 to 10 students are offered the opportunity to study a broad range of subjects from the following learning areas:

  • Religious Education
  • The Arts
    • Dance
    • Drama
    • Media Arts
    • Music
    • Visual Arts
    • Visual Communication Design
  • English
  • Health and Physical Education
  • Humanities
    • Civics and Citizenship
    • Economics and Business
    • Geography
    • History
  • Languages
    • French
    • Italian
    • Japanese
  • Mathematics
  • Science
  • Technologies
    • Design and Technologies
    • Digital Technologies

Within the subjects in the aforementioned learning areas, we incorporate the following capabilities: Critical and Creative Thinking, Ethical, Intercultural and Personal, and Social.

In Year 9, all students are offered the opportunity to learn in a unique, alternative program for six 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
  • Engage in an inquiry-based, student-centred curriculum
  • 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) – all courses that have been accredited by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority.

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

  • Gifted and talented development
  • Enhancement and acceleration
  • Personalised learning programs potentially involving adjustments, such as in literacy and numeracy (English as an Additional Language – EAL)
  • Vocational Preparation Programs
  • A flexible VCE Program enabling Year 10 students to study certain VCE Units 1 & 2, Year 11 students to study VCE Units 3 & 4, and Year 12 students to undertake first year University subjects.