A large part of the ethos at Clarkson Community High School is Invitational Education (William Purkey). The five P's of Invitational Education stand for people, places, policies, programs and processes and these provide the means to address the global nature of the school in terms of inviting students to learn and creating a safe learning environment.

The MATE program (Make A Total Effort) is an initiative that fits perfectly in our invitational ethos. It rewards high achievement by setting goals towards grade point average and good standing (behaviour).

Students in Years 10-12 who meet the attendance requirements of our CORE Macbook program are issued a standard white Macbook for their studies. The MATE program goes one step further by offering high achieving students the reward of an upgrade to a brand new Macbook Pro, which are high-end laptop computers made from aluminium. We also provide the winners with a high quality hard case for their laptops. These machines retail on Apple's website at around $1400 and are very desirable items. This term we have awarded around 30 of these laptops to our high achievers and I am pretty sure that no other school in the state has a similar initiative, nor have they invested such a large amount of funds in this way.

Semester 2 2013 is the first time we have run this rewards program and the winners have been chosen based on their academic performance in the Semester 1 reporting period. Those students will be allowed to use their Macbook Pros until the end of the year, when the selection process begins for 2014.

Congratulations to all our winners and I hope we get to "upgrade" a great deal more next Semester:

Marisa Lee Sam, Gladys Mandebvu, Florence Blagg, Finlay Nolan, Kyle Evers, Jacob Carter, Casey Sivewright, Hayden Taylor-Clinch, Roj Zakholy, Nathan Berger, Nicky Clay, Paul Campbell-Davies, Jaekson Carew, Alicia McIntee, Brad Stopard, Julia Sweetster, Roathanak So, Saiphan Sumah, Hosein Ezati, Ashleigh Tetlow, Brandon Gough, Malia Hunt, Maia Paouri, Shania Slater, Brad Lampitt, Courtney Gibson, Chelsea Mansfield, Nikki Nankervis

Photo: Brad Lampitt and Malia Hunt