College Head of Learning

Parent Teacher Interviews

If you have not yet booked your Parent Teacher Interviews for Tuesday 26 March or Thursday 4 April, please log into the Parent Portal to do so. Instructions on how to access the portal and how to make bookings were emailed to all parents/guardians on Monday 18 March. Bookings will remain open until 10.00pm on the evening before each of the interview dates.

We know that Parent Teacher Interview evenings pose quite a logistical challenge for all concerned and we always endeavour to make the evenings run smoothly so you can speak with your selected teachers at the appointed times. Unfortunately, sometimes teachers fall behind in their very busy appointment schedules. If this happens, please do your best to remain calm and patient.

To help ensure that parents are not kept waiting unnecessarily, we ask that parents are respectful of the appointment times of others:

• If a teacher does fall behind schedule, they will do their best to see parents in the scheduled order. We ask that those waiting do not try to jump ahead of others who may have an earlier appointment time.
• If an interview is taking longer than the allotted 5 minutes (secondary school) or 10 minutes (primary school), you and the teacher will need to make an alternative time to continue the conversation. This could be in person at a mutually convenient time, or via phone or email.

Occasionally, circumstances arise which prevent a teacher from being able to honour their interview times – usually this is due to illness. If for any reason a teacher is unable to attend a scheduled interview time we will do our very best to let you know via email as soon as we are aware of the problem. In these cases, the teacher will contact you at a later date to reschedule a meeting time or to arrange a telephone interview.

NAPLAN 2019

Parents of all students in Years 3, 5, 7 & 9 have been emailed information about the upcoming NAPLAN familiarisation tests, due to be held before the end of this term:

• Year 3      Monday 1 April at 9.00am
• Year 5      Tuesday 26 March at 9.00am
• Year 7      Thursday 28 March at 9.00am
• Year 9      Friday 29 March at 11.20am

Students will need their iPads and headphones for these familiarisation tests. 

More information about the actual NAPLAN tests will be published early in Term 2. In the meantime, please resist the urge to buy practice NAPLAN materials which you may see in newsagents and supermarkets in the coming weeks. There are many, many publishing companies who are trying to profit from anxieties parents may be feeling about NAPLAN tests by selling practice materials. These materials are completely unnecessary and only serve to make students more anxious about the tests. When talking to your child about NAPLAN tests, please remind them that NAPLAN tests are just one more way of finding out what students know and can do, and should be treated with the same determination and effort as all other school assessment tasks.

Ms Kerri Batch

College Head of Learning