Principal's Report 

Welcome back to Rangeview for 2026

We are so pleased to be back with all of our wonderful Rangeview Families including welcoming our new Foundation Families as they start their Rangeview journey. As a parent myself, who has recently seen a child right through the levels at Rangeview, it is indeed a journey. The growth, development, and depth of experience that occurs throughout Primary School is nothing short of remarkable. As a team of educators, we see this as both a responsibility, and a privilege, to have such influence over this time. 

We welcomed 82 new Foundation students to the school and 18 students from other levels across the school. We begin the year with 671 students from Foundation to Level 6. 

We were proud to congratulate Liam Sommers last year as he picked up the Acting Principal role at Coldstream Primary School. He will be there Wednesday to Friday each week. 

We are thrilled to announce that the new Acting Assistant Principal at Rangeview will be Tania Balderston. The school leadership team is really looking forward to working with Tania in this new role. I am sure you will all join me in congratulating Tania!

We would also like to congratulate Tegan Cant on her new position of Mental Health and Wellbeing Leading Teacher this year. Tegan joins the leadership team and also continues in her role of Classroom Teacher in Level 5. 

We were very lucky to have a number of new staff join our school for 2026 and it has been wonderful to see them settle in over the last two weeks and start to develop relationships with their students and teams. 

Appley Groch - Level 1

Krista Morris - Library

Samantha O'Donnell - Front Office

Our school leadership team is also excited to be welcoming our four new school captains - Tessa McLeod, Amelie Williamson, Ollie Cannon and Ryan Zhang to their roles for 2026. 

This Term at Rangeview we have a wide variety of programs, events and special celebrations that will take place. We began last week with the Start Up Program across the school. This is designed to help our students settle into their new grades and get to know their teachers and their new classmates. We welcomed back our Level 1 - 6 students on Wednesday 28th January and our newest learners began on Thursday 29th with the commencement of Foundation for the year. 

In the first week our new Grade 6 Peer Mediators had their training with Natalie Powell the school Social Worker, and they are now out in the playground each lunch break helping students with friendship issues and small problems/concerns. On Tuesday 3rd February we held our Rangeview Swimming Carnival. This was a spectacular day and our thanks go to Mitch Clark and Meg Hubbard for again running such a streamlined and fun filled event. Our Student Leaders have today begun their before school meetings on Friday mornings with Ms Balderston and myself. They will learn more about leadership and will have roles and responsibilities across the school. Our staff have met together in teams to ensure that there is a good handover of learning and engagement information from one level's teachers to the next. We want the transition time to be as smooth and positive as possible for all of our students. 

Term One Curriculum and Events

Throughout this term we will have District Swimming, Safer Internet Day, Getting to Know you Parent / Teacher Interviews, Whole School Photo Day, Level 3 & 5 NAPLAN, Whole School Harmony Day, Whole School Cross Country and Senior School House Athletics. 

Our Foundation and Level 1 students will be continuing our new phonics program ‘Little Learners Love Literacy’ and the teaching of phonological knowledge and phonological awareness will be structured and strengthened across the school from Level 2 – 6. Our whole school will be working towards the implementation of the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM) 2.0 and our staff began this work with a half day Professional Learning on Day 1 on Responsive Teaching with Bronwyn Ryrie-Jones. https://bronwynryriejones.com/about/ 

Our school continues as a Lead School in the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships and we will this year introduce the Schoolwide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) Framework. https://www.vic.gov.au/school-wide-positive-behaviour-support We are very excited to be starting with this new approach and there will be changes across the school around  how we positively support our students in both the classroom and the playground. Some of our reward models may change as this framework comes into play. 

Specialist Program

We continue with our specialist programs at Rangeview this year - Art, Music, Physical Education, Mathematics and Digital Technology. We will also be providing language study in both German and Auslan with the Junior school accessing the Auslan program first semester and the Senior school accessing the German program. This will change over for second semester. Students will work with these specialist teachers once a week to advance their skills in these areas. 

Rangeview Welcome Mixer

We look forward to meeting lots of families at our Welcome Soiree on Monday 16th February at the Heatherdale Cricket Pavilion. This event is open to all families and is a child free event. 

Thanks to the Their Care Team for providing our Charcuterie on the night. 

New Staff Toilets

We were fortunate to be able to refurbish the staff toilets over the holiday break and now have 6 Unisex Staff Toilets available for our hard working staff. We are thrilled that this is able to now provide equity of access to facilities for both genders. 

School Council Elections

Notice of Elections and Call for Nominations 2026 - 2027

Friday 6th February 2026

Closing date for Nominations Friday 13th February 2026

I am announcing the annual elections for our School Council. School council members are elected (or co-opted in the case of community members) for approximately a two year term. Usually half the membership expires each year creating vacancies for the annual school council election. We have 3 Parent vacancies this year. 

Process:

1. The principal arranges and conducts the election. The principal will issue a notice and call for nominations for parent and Department employee members in February or early March. The notice will include a nomination form or way to reply and the date to submit the nomination. The election process must be completed by the end of March.

2. Return the nomination form to the principal through the office within the time frame stated on the notice of election. Those who nominate will receive a receipt. Ask at the school for help if you would like to stand for election and are not sure what to do.

3. If there are more nominations than there are vacant positions on council, a ballot (vote) will be conducted after the call for nominations has closed.

4. If you decide to stand for election, you can arrange for someone to nominate you or you can nominate yourself in the appropriate category.

5. Forms are available at the office.

Annual Privacy Reminder for 2026

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy.

Please take time to remind yourself of our school’s collection notice, found on our website. For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents. This information is also linked from our School Website, and is available in nine community languages:

• Amharic

• Arabic

• Dari

• Gujarati

• Mandarin

• Somali

• Sudanese

• Turkish

• Urdu

• Vietnamese

This will be a wonderful year - we are so pleased to be back! 

Marika Ferguson

Principal