Principal's News

Welcome Back

It is so great to get back into the term and welcome our students and staff back as we returned on Monday morning. I have really enjoyed seeing families around the school and having a quick chat with you over the course of the week. Importantly, our students have returned settled, refreshed and ready for an exciting term ahead. 

Having a look over the coming weeks, term 3 begins with a rush with so many activities and events coming up. We have incursions and excursions, school tours, an athletics carnival, 100 days of prep, a whole school swimming program and all of that is just in the first 5 weeks of term. 

I hope the term break provided you an opportunity to spend some time together as a family, I appreciate you taking a moment to read over our newsletter and highlights from around the school. 

Principal Awards

Congratulations to our Semester 1 Principal Award recipients that were acknowledged at our final assembly at the end of Term 2, I genuinely look forward to reading the classroom teacher comments and writing these out for our students. On so many occasions, students are acknowledged for many attributes beyond just academic achievement, it is pleasing to read how our students are caring for their peers and for their attitudes and values that are on display over the course of the first semester. 

End of Term Awards

Our two final assemblies of Term 2 provided a chance to celebrate a host of achievements from around the school, congratulations to the following students for their work around the school: 

• Team Kids MAD (Making a Difference) Awards – Lyanna Z, Lucas P-P, Louika M
• Specialist Awards – Rory G, Kaia B, Freya O, Yuna M
• Terrific Kids Awards – Ines L-R, Naoki B
• David Southwick Future Leader Award – Hiroaki K

Industrial Action

Many of you will be aware of proposed AEU (Australian Education Union) industrial action including a stop work on Thursday July 23rd. As a result of this action, we expect significant disruption to the normal operation of the school. We will have reduced staffing on the day, and it will not be possible to provide our usual teaching, learning and extracurricular programs. We would encourage families to be aware of these changes. Team Kids will not be in operation on this day.

Update - 3pm: 17th July - A revised Enterprise Bargaining Agreement (EBA) offer was presented to members of the AEU, APF, CPSU, ANMF and individual bargaining representatives. At this stage, it remains likely that the stop work action will proceed next Thursday unless in principle agreement is met on this revised EBA. Where this doesn’t occur, the school will remain open but will operate with significantly reduced staffing and limited programs. I will update you as this situation evolves.

Maintenance Update

We have spent the mid-year holiday break working through some exciting little projects around the school to support the start of Term 3, this included roof plumbing and internal plastering in the prep rooms, carpet replacement in 1/2E, a new water bubbler installed near our junior playground, our new junior playground installed ready for our Prep - Year 2 students, new rolling bars in our senior playground and electrical upgrades, including lighting and fan automations in our student toilets. It was a busy two week period and an opportunity to undertake some maintenance and upgrades to support the return to Term 3. 

Congratulations to our Junior School Council (JSC) who effectively fundraised over the last two years to purchase our new water bubbler and further still, a significant thank you to our school community who have generously fundraised for the upgraded junior playground. It has become a very popular addition for our Prep to Year 2 students and their play time. 

AusAlert

A national alert system will be tested on Monday 27th July at 2pm. AusAlert is a new national emergency warning system. It sends warning messages to compatible mobile devices during emergencies. You can minimise disruption by turning off mobile devices or switching them to aeroplane mode before 2 pm on Monday 27 July. You should leave these off for one hour, as operationally appropriate. Whilst students will be out on a lunch break at that time, we are attempting to forward plan to minimise disruption and not cause any anxiety for students at that time. You can learn more about AusAlert via the Australian Government website here.

Welcome

A warm welcome to Mrs (Sarah) Horner who has joined our Year 5/6 team as the English teacher in Year 5/6C, it is terrific to secure a teacher of her enthusiasm for our school and to already have an existing understanding of the Year 5/6 area and our senior students is wonderful. Students have enjoyed having the chance to get to know Mrs Horner a little more throughout this week. 

Parent-Teacher Interviews

A reminder that our Parent-Teacher interviews will be held next Wednesday during a student free day, bookings are available via the Sentral Parent-App or you may contact the office if you require any additional assistance. Further information around locations will be provided early next week. The bookings are set to close at 3:30pm next Tuesday afternoon. 

Please note that as a result of the Industrial Action and Stop-Work day scheduled for the 23rd July, Parent-Teacher interviews scheduled for Thursday will no longer occur and instead be held on Thursday 30th July (Week 3).

Professional Learning

My acknowledgements to our teaching leadership team, Onda sensei, Morita sensei and Miss Gibson who joined 54 other leaders from our network in a leadership and professional development series on Thursday afternoon. Staff have had the opportunity to work alongside Ryan Dunn. 

Dr Ryan Dunn has considerable experience within education and has advised and collaborated with schools and districts across Australia, the USA and Canada. He has worked extensively with school leaders in Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Alberta to support leadership development at a system, network and school level. Miss Gibson, Onda sensei and Morita sensei will work with this leadership on two further occasions this term and we are excited about what they bring back to school. 

On Thursday afternoon, all teaching staff were fortunate to be working with Kylie Farmer, Kylie is a Languages Education Consultant and an experienced primary teacher of Japanese. Kylie has managed and worked on a range of projects relating to Languages Education at a national and state level and is acutely aware of current issues and policies affecting teaching of Languages. She is involved in resource development and facilitates Professional Learning and Teacher Networks to support quality teaching of Languages. We enjoyed a great session with her on Thursday afternoon.

National Outside School Hours Care Educators’ Day - Wednesday 29th July 2026

This year’s theme for National Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) Educators’ Day is "Valuing OOSH Educators Every Day". OSHC Educators play an important part in our community by providing safe and engaging programs which support families to work or attend to other commitments. We would like to recognise the significant contribution our Team Kids educators and program leaders make and thank them for their tirelessly work within our OSHC program and the wider school community. When you see our Team Kids staff make sure to let them know how valued they are and your appreciation for all they do.

NAPLAN 2026

The individual NAPLAN results for our Year 3 and 5 students were released this week. NAPLAN measures student achievement in numeracy, reading, writing, spelling and grammar and punctuation against 4 proficiency levels:

• exceeding

• strong

• developing

• needs additional support.

Each set of NAPLAN results is an important milestone but it’s also important that students know that one result does not define them – these results are about making sure every student gets the support they need so they can continue to get the best from their learning.

When we provide you with your results, you will receive information about what the proficiency levels mean. Australian Catholic University’s Jessica Holloway, an expert in educational data and accountability recently noted, “conversations that parents have with their children about the results can really change the way that a child thinks about themselves, not only in the immediate time but also for the future. Teachers are the ones who are on the ground. They’re the ones who know the students better than anybody. And they’re able to speak, really expertly, on the student’s progress and achievement level”. 

As always, you’re welcome to speak to me, or your child’s teacher with any questions about these results.

NAIDOC Week Celebration

Held across Australia in the first week of July each year (Sunday to Sunday), NAIDOC Week celebrates and recognises the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. NAIDOC Week is an opportunity for all Australians to learn about First Nations cultures and histories and participate in celebrations

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD)

Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD).  The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2020). 

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

• year of schooling

• category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional

• level of adjustment provided: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

This information assists schools to:

• formally recognise the supports and adjustments provided to students with disability in schools.

• consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools.

• develop shared practices so that they can review their learning programs in order to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

The NCCD will have no direct impact on your child and your child will not be involved in any testing process. The school will provide data to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured.  All information is protected by privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage and disclosure of personal information.  To find out more about these matters, please refer to the Australian Government’s Privacy Policy.

Further information about the NCCD can be found on the NCCD Portal. If you have any questions about the NCCD, please contact the school. 

Enrol Now for 2027! 

We are currently receiving high interest for our 2027 Prep enrolments and need to establish how many siblings of our enrolled students are due to start at our school next year. I would like to thank those families who have already enrolled their child for next year. If you have a child starting prep, please ensure you have completed their enrolment form as soon as possible. 

Thanks for supporting the first week back, enjoy the weekend ahead and for those of you with the gumption to wake up and watch the World Cup final on Monday morning, enjoy. 

With Thanks, 

Edward Strain

Principal