Newport Lakes Primary School

Principal Report

Happy mid Term 4 families!

 

I hope you were able to take the opportunity of having a mini break over the Melbourne Cup (extra!) long weekend and enjoy some quality family time. Many of the children were very tired after participating in the busy early part of Term 4 full of class work, excursions and assessments. Additionally, the F-2 children also participated in the strenuous 10 day swimming program. A good rest was well earned!

 

World Teachers Day - October 25th

Thank you to our wonderful parent community for helping the school celebrate World Teachers Day on Friday, October 25th with a delicious morning tea. The teaching staff were very appreciative of the sweet and savoury delicacies that were prepared by many members of our school community. As you may realise, teaching is a true vocation and not for everyone as the workload can be immense and it can be full of tough moments, alongside extremely fun and rewarding ones. Hence, many schools have struggled to retain staff in recent years due to many factors, including burn out and a lack of support from leadership and parents. We are extremely grateful here at Newport Lakes Primary School that we experience a wonderful level of support from our parent community and I know that is a reflection on the professional care and dedication that our amazing teachers show to all our students on a daily basis.

 

A special thank you to the NLPS Parents Club for helping to organise the event.

 

School Organisation for 2025    

Although there still may be changes between now and when we begin the new school year, based on the numbers that we currently expect, we are planning to have 22 classes in 2025 with straight classes from Foundation to Year 4 and composite grades in Year 5/6.  Our current enrolment is 550 and we are expecting to increase to approximately 560 in 2025 but it is the uncertainty of enrolments that make it difficult to confirm the final school organisation for next year. The proposed school organisation is as follows;

 

Leadership Team

  • Principal 
  • Assistant Principal
  • Mental Health & Wellbeing Leader
  • Learning Specialists

22 classrooms (F-6)

 

Specialist programs

  • Physical Education (PE)
  • Visual Art
  • STEM
  • LOTE (Auslan)
  • Library
  • Performing Arts ~ Music and Drama 
  • Learning Support (Literacy)

Victorian state schools are primarily self-managed and staffing decisions, including how many teachers a school employs, what areas they teach and the programs a school conducts (specialist areas, intervention programs, extra-curricula etc.) are decisions made by the principal in consultation with staff.

 

Each school receives yearly funding, and it is the principal’s role to ensure the school operates within this budget. The funding is based on a formula involving the actual number of students enrolled on census day (February 28, 2025) and then further funds for additional needs for which the school may be eligible. These additional funds include low socio-economic, EAL (English as an Additional Language), remote location, etc. Much of this information is gained when parents complete their enrolment form when their child first begins school. Questions such as the parent’s present occupation, highest level of education, language spoken at home, etc. all go towards determining a child's level of need. Here at Newport Lakes Primary School we are classified as ‘high’ in the level of socio-economic and ‘low’ in the area of EAL thus qualifying the school for very little additional funding. 

 

When determining class sizes in a primary school, the funding formula allows for, as a general rule, 1 classroom teacher for every 25 students.  After this has been established, we then look at differing models involving straight classes, composites, or a mixture of both. It is also a department expectation that the F-2-year levels will have less numbers, on average, than the upper grades. Further details of staffing in each year level and specialist classes will be provided later in the year as these details are still to be finalised.

 

2025 Classes - Learning Buddy Lists

Thank you to those parents that sent responses to myself or the school. We seem to have had a bigger than normal response rate this year around friendship requests, so I wanted to make clearer the process the school uses to ensure that our students go into their next class with peers they wish to learn alongside. 

 

In the middle of Term 4, each student is asked to place up to 5 peers on their ‘Learning Buddy’ List. These peers can come from across the whole cohort and often activities are done prior to ensure that the students interact with others through games and collaborative learning activities to help remind them of their potential choices. Teachers remind students that a good learning buddy is someone that makes you feel safe and comfortable, and one that you can work with and alongside - not necessarily the person you like eating lunch with or playing brandy or soccer with!

 

Each students’ list of peers gets entered into Class Creator, the program we use to assist us in creating balanced classes and then we can be assured that each child gets at least one of their learning buddies in their next class. As you can understand, there will be years where they will get one and others where they may get three or even more of that particular years list. Regardless, we always check to ensure that there is certainly one. If you think that your child has not got a named peer, please check with the school as your child may have forgotten their full list.

 

Regarding parent requests re. friendships, we do our very best to ensure that we place students with at least one of the names that parents have put forward but ask that you please understand that we may also have competing demands that may affect how we balance the class. 

 

Transition Begins - Pre-school to Foundation / Primary to Secondary 

Yesterday we welcomed our 2025 Foundation students and their families to Newport Lakes Primary School for the first session of their pre-school to prep transition program. In 2025 we have 66 new children beginning in our Foundation classes. This number is down on previous years, but is in line with the decrease in Foundation enrolments across all our local network.

 

The students will spend three sessions at NLPS in preparation to begin their education in 2025 and we are so excited to support them in transitioning into this exciting new chapter of their lives! During next week’s session (Thursday, November 14th), we will also be hosting an information session for their parents.

 

Later in the term, the Year 6 students will have the opportunity of visiting their new state secondary school on Tuesday 10th December 2024. This is a state-wide Year 6-7 transition day for all state secondary schools. Some Independent and Catholic secondary colleges may have chosen an alternate date and parents will need to check with the school for details.

 

Parent Seminar: Moving Kids from Anxiety to Resilience

A reminder to our families about our special parent seminar focused on anxiety and wellbeing, presented by the esteemed Dr. Jodi Richardson. 

  • Date: Wednesday 20th of November
  • Time: 6:30-8:00pm
  • Cost:  $15.00 per ticket - Special Price of $10 for NLPS families! - check Compass for the discount code
  • Book your tickets - HERE

Have a fabulous fortnight everyone!

 

 

Carly Bannon

Proud NLPS Principal