All students will study

• Religious Education
• Mathematics
• English
• Physical Education
• Humanities & Social Sciences (HASS)
• Science
• Health
• Six Elective subjects
• RISE (Resilient, Independent, Successful, Empowered)
• Project Learning (focussed on careers, financial literacy, and team building)

Students across all ability levels engage with the same core subjects from the Western Australian Curriculum. However, differentiation may occur in English and Mathematics, where classes may undertake tasks at varying levels of complexity to support diverse learning needs.

Each elective subject runs for one semester, and students are invited to indicate their preferences at the beginning of Term Three. While the College makes every effort to accomodate students’ choices, there may be instances where this is not possible due to timetabling constraints or limited resources.

Music and Soccer are offered as yearlong electives. Music must be selected by students who hold a music scholarship or are involved in the instrumental program. Please note that a yearlong elective subject will take the place of two semester-long electives – one in Semester One and one in Semester Two.

All students will study

• Careers
• Mercy Heritage
• Organisation
• Social and Emotional Learning
• Leadership

Students explore the complexities of human experience and the search for truth. They describe how for Catholics the search for truth leads to spiritual growth. Students investigate the development and structure of the Bible through the exploration of the meaning of scriptural texts. Students provide examples from Scripture of how God’s redemptive power of love is fully revealed in God’s Son, Jesus, reflecting on the life, sufferings, death, and resurrection of Jesus. They discuss the influence that Jesus has on the lives of Christians in their search for truth.

Students identify the significance of Scripture and Tradition in the Catholic Church’s mission to continue the work of Jesus. They describe Church structures that assist people to live their lives in communion with God and one another as Jesus taught. Students make connections between scriptural texts and how Catholics pray and celebrate the Sacraments and liturgies. Students explore how Catholics draw on God’s love to practise Christians values and live moral lives.

In Year Nine, students interact with peers, teachers, individuals, groups, and community members in a range of face-to-face and virtual environments. They experience learning in familiar and unfamiliar contexts that relate to an array of contexts.

Students interpret, create, evaluate, discuss, and perform a wide range of literary texts in which the primary purpose is aesthetic, as well as texts designed to inform and persuade. These include various types of media texts, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, dramatic performances, and multimodal texts. Students develop a critical understanding of the contemporary media and the differences between media texts.

Literary texts that support and extend students as independent readers involve complex, challenging, and unpredictable plot sequences and hybrid structures that may serve multiple purposes. These texts explore themes of human experience and cultural significance, interpersonal relationships, and ethical and global dilemmas within real-world and fictional settings and represent a variety of perspectives. Informative texts represent a synthesis of technical and abstract information about a wide range of specialised topics. Text structures are more complex and include chapters, headings and subheadings, tables of contents, indexes, and glossaries. Language features include successive complex sentences with embedded clauses, a high proportion of unfamiliar and technical vocabulary, figurative and rhetorical language, and dense information supported by various types of graphics presented in visual form.

Students create a range of imaginative, informative, and persuasive types of texts including narratives, procedures, performances, reports, discussions, literary analyses, transformations of texts and reviews

English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) learners are those whose first language is a language or dialect other than Standard Australian English (SAE), which is the variety of spoken and written English used formally in Australian schools. While EAL/D learners bring with them a wealth of knowledge, understandings, and values from their own culture to a classroom, they require additional support to assist them in developing proficiency in SAE.

The EAL/D teaching, learning, and assessment model shows how various building blocks interconnect to scaffold the language teaching process and to embed the students’ language development in SAE. With repeated practice, new learning becomes integrated and language development continues to progress as it becomes more complex.

The English as an Additional Language/Dialect (EAL/D) Progress Map is the Western Australian planning, monitoring, and assessment tool for all students requiring support in developing Standard Australian English (SAE), who come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, whether arriving from overseas or born in Australia, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

The purpose of the EAL/D Progress Map is to:

• describe student progress across listening, speaking, reading, and viewing and writing modes in four phases of schooling – early childhood, middle childhood, early adolescence, and late adolescence
• acknowledge the existing language skills and abilities of EAL/D students
• provide an effective and valid means of reporting EAL/D student proficiency in SAE. EAL/D progress Map – Secondary

In Year Nine Humanities and Social Sciences, students develop increasing independence in critical thinking and skill application, which includes questioning, researching, analysing, evaluating, communicating, and reflecting. They apply these skills to investigate events, developments, issues, and phenomena, both historical and contemporary.

In Civics and Citizenship, students examine the role of key players in the political system, the way citizens’ decisions are shaped during an election campaign, and how a government is formed. Students investigate how Australia’s court system works in support of a democratic and just society.

In Economics and Business, students are introduced to the concepts of specialisation and trade. They examine the connections between consumers, businesses, and government, both within Australia and with other countries, through the flow of goods, services, and resources in a global economy. The roles and responsibilities of the participants in the changing Australian and global workplace are explored.

In Geography, students inquire into the production of food and fibre, and the role of the biotic environment, and explore how people, through their choices and actions, are connected to places in a variety of ways. Students apply this understanding to a wide range of places and environments.

In History, students investigate within the historical context of the making of the modern world from 1750 to 1918. They consider how new ideas and technological developments contributed to change in this period, and the significance of World War I.

The proficiency strands—understanding, fluency, problem-solving, and reasoning—are an integral part of mathematics content across the three content strands: number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability. The proficiencies reinforce the significance of working mathematically within the content and describe how the content is explored or developed. They provide the language to build in the developmental aspects of the learning of mathematics. The achievement standards reflect the content and encompass the proficiencies.

At this year level:

Understanding includes describing the relationship between graphs and equations, simplifying a range of algebraic expressions, and explaining the use of relative frequencies to estimate probabilities and of the trigonometric ratios for right-angle triangles.

Fluency includes applying the index laws to expressions with integer indices, expressing numbers in scientific notation, listing outcomes for experiments, developing familiarity with calculations involving the Cartesian plane, and calculating areas of shapes and surface areas of prisms.

Problem-solving includes formulating and modelling practical situations involving surface areas and volumes of right prisms, applying ratio and scale factors to similar figures, solving problems involving right-angle trigonometry, and collecting data from secondary sources to investigate an issue.

Reasoning includes following mathematical arguments, evaluating media reports and using statistical knowledge to clarify situations, developing strategies in investigating similarity, and sketching linear graphs.

In Year Nine, students explore ways in which the human body as a system responds to its external environment and the interdependencies between biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems.

They are introduced to the notion of the atom as a system of protons, electrons, and neutrons, and how this system can change through nuclear decay. They learn that matter can be rearranged through chemical change and that these changes play an important role in many systems.

They develop a more sophisticated view of energy transfer through studies of heat, sound, light, and electrical energy. They begin to apply their understanding of Earth being subject to change within and on its surface through studying plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes.

Students use experimentation to isolate relationships between components in systems and explain these relationships through increasingly complex representations. They make predictions and propose explanations, drawing on evidence to support their views while considering other points of view.

In Health, the content provides for students to broaden their knowledge of the factors that shape their personal identity and the health and wellbeing of others. They further develop their ability to make informed decisions, taking into consideration the influence of external factors on their behaviour and their capacity to achieve a healthy lifestyle. They continue to develop knowledge, skills, and understandings in relation to respectful relationships, with a focus on relationship skills that promote positive interactions and manage conflict.