Welcome to
Junior Secondary
A time of exploration, curiosity and plenty of fun sprinkled into every lesson. Some students are super eager to start Secondary and others approach it with a bit more uncertainty. Wherever students are at, Junior Secondary is designed to make them feel welcome.
The transition from childhood to teen hood in Years 7-9 is an exhilarating and demanding period and we accompany your child on this journey. During this time, students experience a surge in creativity, energy, and curiosity, which we aim to harness by making learning engaging yet challenging.
We focus on ensuring students have a strong foundation of core skills as well as providing rich learning opportunities for application and extension. Our approach involves offering students diverse opportunities to apply and showcase their understanding and skills while nurturing their individual talents.
Across the Junior Secondary years, challenge is intentional, helping students grow academically, personally and spiritually through camps, group projects, problem solving, excursions and service opportunities.
Year 7 & 8
Our Year 7 & 8 program introduces a broad range of subjects, helping students explore different disciplines and discover their God-given passions and talents. Our specialist facilities for Science, Art, Music, Drama, Sport and Technologies enable students to enjoy practical activities throughout their lessons. Each unit of work sits under a ‘Biblical Signpost’ that points to how this knowledge unveils a part of God’s story. This goes hand-in-hand with the Thread that identifies our role in it. The Biblical Signpost in Year 8 Science ‘Fearfully and Wonderfully Made’ attributed to a unit on the Human Body exemplifies how students are pointed beyond the head knowledge of how the heart and lungs work, or the enjoyment of dissections, to how we are created by an ultimate designer and this knowledge prompts us as ‘Awe Dwellers’ to praise and honour him.
Our targeted programs in Maths and English ensure that each student is able to focus on key skills to experience the appropriate level of stretch in their learning. This builds a solid foundation of literacy and numeracy skills for the rest of their secondary journey.
In Year 7 and 8 all students experience the full range of design and digital technologies as well as the performing and creative arts in rotations. Rotations are smaller classes that rotate through four learning areas at each Year level. While offerings can change slightly from year to year, they usually cover areas such as:
Digital Technology
Food Technology
Horticulture
Media Studies
STEM
Textiles
Visual Communication and Design
Wood Technology
Year 9
The culmination of the Junior Secondary experience is Year 9, this is when students are ready for a bigger horizon. They’re forming their own convictions, asking deeper questions and wanting learning that feels connected to real life. This year is intentionally designed to meet that hunger. Students step into more responsibility, explore subjects with greater independence and take part in experiences that build resilience and character. Year 9 is the final year of preparations in Junior Secondary before students launch into varying pathways of the senior years, helping students recognise their strengths and discover how God is shaping their story.
In Year 9, students have the opportunity to do a number of electives chosen from a wide range of areas including:
Art
Business Studies
Drama,
Digital Technology
Food Technology
Horticulture
Indonesian
STEM
Textiles
Wood Technology
Again, Biblical Signposts head up all these units, such as ‘Come to the Feast’ in Year 9 Food Technology, in which students plan and prepare a meal for staff as ‘Community Builders’ at MECS.
A central element of Year 9 is the ‘Journey’ program which challenges and inspires students to be equipped as a person who brings the Kingdom of God, guiding them through stages of reflection, challenge and planning for their Senior years.
The ‘Journey’ program sits at the heart of Year 9. It’s a year-long experience that invites students to pause, look around at the stories that have, and are still, shaping them, and notice the cultural messages they’ve absorbed along the way. From there, they’re challenged to consider God’s bigger story and their place within it. Through camps, city experiences, purposeful projects and guided reflection, students learn to stretch themselves, build courage, and grow in wisdom. Journey helps them see that they are created with purpose and equipped to make a meaningful impact in their communities.