Principal's Message

Good afternon parents and carers,

What an incredible fortnight of learning and celebration of success and community at St Philomena's.  

Last Wednesday, our Secondary Leaders of Learning hosted the Term 1 Progress Parent evening, where parents and staff had the opportunity to discuss students learning engagement throughout term 1.  Thank you to all the secondary families that came to support this important event.  It was wonderful to see over 133, 5 minute appointments were made to meet the secondary staff across all Key Learning Areas ranging from English to Visual Arts.

On Wednesday, our Primary Leaders of Learning hosted the Term 1 Date with Data Parent Evening, providing parents and leaders of learning the opportunity to discuss student learning and assessment data and more importantly the learning goals that have been shaped informed by current student progress.  Next Wednesday, parents will have another opportunity to make an appointment to see their child's Leader of Learning to discuss their learning progress from Term 1.  All appointments can be made via the parent portal.  Please make contact with the school admin team if you require any assistance.

Thank you to Mrs Allison Turner and her support team for their dedication and support of the annual P&F Mother's Day stall.  A very big thank you to our school community for the incredible amount of donations to support the stall.  Our students had a wonderful time looking over the range of beautiful gift ideas to surprise their mum on Sunday.  

Today, we celebrated our Kindergarten to Year 2 Mother's Day Liturgy, where our students presented a vareity of items that showed us how much they love and adore their mums.  Thank you to all the mums that joined as for the liturgy and stayed for the morning tea in the school grounds.  I was overhelmed with the number of mums in attendance.  Our staff and students thank you for your participation and support.

Next term (Term 3), I will be taking on a secondment position at the Catholic Schools Office as a School Performance Leader for a period of 5 weeks from Monday 31st July until Friday 1st September (Weeks 3 - 7).  Throughout the coming weeks, I will be discussing and formulating an Acting Principal Strategy with both the Director of Catholic Schools, Chris Smyth and Father Vic, our Parish Priest, to ensure the learning and operational business of the school is not impacted during my absence.  Throughout this time as a School Performance Leader, I will be providing learning and operational support to our 5 secondary schools, which includes St Philomena's School, Moree.  The Acting Principal Strategy will be communicated to our families over the coming weeks, once an appropriate plan has been decided.  

Finally, Happy Mother's Day to all our our mums, grandmothers and significant women in our students lives.  I wish you all a very warm and happy Mother's Day on Sunday.  

God bless and enjoy your weekend.

Mr Jamie McDowall

Principal