A message from Emily

Dear parents and carers

Around 1 in 6 Australians have a disability. Disability can be seen or can be invisible! On Friday 2nd of December, St. John’s will acknowledge and celebrate International Day of People with Disability. We invite children to wear rainbow clothing on this day. Our children will explore disability over the week through story books, videos, conversations and maybe even a guest speaker! 

Last week the Leadership team worked offsite for two days so we could delve deep into data analysis, reflection and evaluation of our 2022 Annual Action Plan (AAP) as well as create our 2023 AAP. These days were very powerful and it was great to stop, reflect and celebrate as well as look to new and exciting possibilities for St John's next year. We also discussed how we would share this work with families and are looking to host a community conversation early in 2023. We also thought it would be important to share some of a success this year and I have included some of these in the dot points below.

• Student MACSSIS Data: Children feel like they have strong relationships with their teachers who encourage them to do their best, their teachers are respectful and the they would be happy to have them as their teacher again. Areas we want to find out more about through focus groups with children is how we can ensure they feel safe at school and what help seeking strategies do they use and could they use.
• Family MACSSIS Data: Parents feel that St John's is a good fit for their child/ren and parent engagement has increased. We also identified that we want to increase parent engagement further and will start by considering the different ways we communicate and how we can streamline this in consultation with families next year. If this is something you'd be interested in being a part of then please make sure you look out for our Community Conversations session in Term 1 2023
• Staff MACSSIS Data: Staff feel overwhelming positively about their workplace at St John's. Our data out performs the MACS average significantly in all areas of the MACSSIS survey. This is the result of every staff member working together collaboratively with a shared purpose and vision. An area we have identified that we want to improve in during 2023 is our feedback procedures and process for all staff.
• Enhancing the Catholic Identity at St John's has been priority this year and it was very rewarding to see that this area demonstrated growth in each of the MACSSIS surveys. We look forward to continuing this work in 2023.
• Our PAT- Reading data shows there has been growth across all cohorts (1-6) in reading from 2021 - 2022 and we have consistently grown children working at or around the average.
• Our NAPLAN Literacy data was very positive in Reading for both Year 3 and 5s. We have identified the areas of spelling, grammar and punctuation as areas for growth. In 2023 we will be working with Lisa Burman and implementing Heggerty as strategies through our approach to writing as a way to improve these areas across the school. 
• Our PAT- Maths data shows that our mean is consistently tracking slightly below the average across ones and twos. It also appears that we are effectively growing children who are working at the higher end of the scale in particular. Our 3-6 trend data shows consistent growth each year.  Our Year 3s are consistently above the normed mean and Year 4s - 6s just below the mean each year.
• Our Numeracy NAPLAN data shows that our lowest performing Year 5s are not as low as the State but our trend data demonstrates inconsistency across 5 years for both Year 5 and Year 3 data. As a leadership team we will be investigating ways to build teacher capacity and a strategic approach to improving our data in this area during 2023. 
• Our Wellbeing data shows most children in the early years feel happy, cheerful, safe & hopeful at school, particularly in junior classes. Most children feel respected and valued. Children in Prep -1 require emotional language to support them with peer conflict. From Year 3 upwards, children identified increasing concerns relating to personal and psychological safety, resilience and connectedness. This is something that has been identified in many schools and could be a result of our long periods in lockdown during 2020-2021. This has been the main driver as to why we decided to work with The Resilience Project in 2023.

In summary our key priorities for 2023 will be to continue to enhance our Catholic Identity as a school, work with families to increase engagement, create a culture of a 'Community of Writers' within hubs and implement strategies to ensure children's wellbeing, connectedness and feeling safe at school through our partnership with the Resilience Project. I look forward to sharing more with you around this across 2023.

This week the children who have lessons with Tom from ABC Music Group put on concert for the whole school. We was fabulous to see this demonstration of talent within our community. The children who perform showed bravery and risk-taking by playing their instruments to the whole school and it was joyous to see their pride when everyone cheered for them.

I would like to take this opportunity to announce and congratulate Andrew Sharpe who has accepted a full time position at new school for 2023. Andrew has had many roles at St John's over the last two years including PE teacher, inter-school sports and working at the Farm. Andrew worked in partnership with Emmanuel College to co-ordinate the addition of our new chicken coup. I wish to thank Andrew for his contributions to the St John's community and wish him all the best for this new and exciting opportunity. Next week I will send out an email to introduce all new staff members to the community and announce who our Hub Educators are and the roles of all staff for 2023.

At St John's we ensure we have a small supply of fruit that we can provide children who might be hungry and have eaten all their food in their lunch boxes. We have noticed over the last couple of weeks there are more children requesting this fruit so we encourage you to check in with your children to see of if they might need an extra apple or banana in their lunch box. 

Warm wishes

Emily