Principal's Report

I say this every week, but it has been another busy week at St Finbar's with two groups of Preps visiting us on Monday for their first orientation, and a big group of Year 3 and 4 students heading off to Cricket Blast tomorrow. We look forward to welcoming the rest of our Prep students on Monday...hard to believe that we are at this point already. 

New Website 

We are delighted to announce that our new website is now live, and I think it looks great. I especially love the moving images which really highlight the life of our school, and give a great snapshot of all that we offer at St Finbar's. We are still working with the web developer to make some minor changes, so we welcome any feedback or suggestions that you may have.  One major change that affects parents is that you will no longer be able to log absences through the website. This is a deliberate decision as the NForma Parent Connect App is our prefreed method for recording absences.  This App syncs directly with our NForma attendance system that both the office staff and teachers use, and reduces office administration time. You can still email either your child's teacher or office staff if there are problems with the App and you need to let us know that your child will be away. 

Staffing News 

I'm pleased to announce that we have appointed a new Learning Diversity Leader for next year.  Mrs Laura Maheny is coming to us from St Joseph's in Springvale, and has experience in the LDL role. She is looking forward to getting to know the St Finbar's community and will be getting to know some of you very well over the coming years. 

Exciting times ahead for Mrs Amanda Norton and her family who are heading to the Northern Territory for 12 months. Amanda will be based in Maningrida, which is about 500 kms from Darwin. We will miss Amanda next year at St Finbar's but are looking forward to hearing all about Amanda's adventures in the NT.

Baby News

I'm delighted to announce the safe arrival of Mr Daly's baby.   On the 30th September Teddy Mateo arrived into the world in Bogota, Colombia and all is going well.  Congratulations Shane...fatherhood suits you.

MACSSIS Family Survey

A big thank you to the 74 families who took the time to complete our 2026 MACSSIS Family Survey. This is almost double the number of responses we received in 2025, and we really appreciate you sharing your feedback and helping us continue to improve St Finbar’s.

It was encouraging to see our overall positive endorsement increase from 65% in 2025 to 70% in 2026, reflecting the positive experiences of many families within our school community.

Some of our strongest results were in School Climate (85%), highlighting families’ perceptions of the social and learning environment at St Finbar’s, and Student Safety (77%).  Communication was also a positive result at 75%, a pleasing improvement on last year’s score of 63%.  

We know there is always room to grow, and your feedback helps us identify where we can do better. Strengthening family engagement and ensuring every family feels connected to our school will continue to be a focus. We will also keep looking for ways to ensure our learning environment meets the needs of every child.

Thank you again for your honesty and support. We are fortunate to have such a committed school community, and your feedback is an important part of making St Finbar’s the best it can be for every child and family.

Christmas Carols

It's still a while away, but Christmas will be here before we know it. Our annual Christmas Carols will be held on Wednesday, 2nd December, from 5pm. 

It will run similar to last year's carols with more of a Christmas fair feel to the evening. Most of the festivities will be on the Mary Clare and Thomas Sherry playgrounds so we

just need to hope the weather cooperates. More information will follow shortly. If you, or someone you know, would like to run a stall at the Carols, please let us know. 

Take care,

Michelle Hill

Principal