Principal's Report

PREPARING FOR 2024

For schools, mid to late term 4 is the busiest period of the year as we attend to tasks associated with finishing off the year well, whilst planning for the following year.  Tasks associated with finishing off the year well includes:

• assessing student progress, 
• writing end of year reports, and following up with Parent Teacher Interviews
• running transition programs, 
• holding a grade 6 graduation ceremony, 
• publishing the school magazine, etc

Preparing well for the year to come includes:

• recruitment of staff and making sure new staff are supported to successfully transition into our school,
• developing budgets, 
• creating new class groupings, 
• sorting book lists, 
• developing an Annual Implementation Plan, 
• allocating staff roles, 
• school captain & scholarship program selections,
• facilitating planning days for teams of staff that will be working together in 2024, 
• developing timetables and 
• preparing for a handover of children from their 2023 teacher to their 2024 teacher

For a large multi-campus school, staying on track with all the above at this time of year can be a challenge, but at this stage we’re on track. 

Budgeting

Tomorrow our Finance Committee will come together to further work on developing a budget to present to School Council next Monday.  This is always a challenge, as we struggle to make ends meet, but hopefully this will all be sorted and approved on Monday night.  As always, we’ll be endeavouring to develop budgets that maximise the use of available resources to achieve the best possible outcomes for our students.

Annual Implementation Plan (AIP)

At this time of year all schools are expected to reflect on progress with respect to their Annual Implementation Plan (AIP) and to start developing an AIP for the following year. We’ve been chipping away at these tasks and will have a draft to present at School Council next week.  This plan identifies priorities for the coming year and includes both teaching & learning priorities and those relating to student wellbeing. 

School Captain Selections

Over the past couple of weeks grade 5 students have been writing letters to express their interest in school captain and other leadership roles for 2024.  They have done a fabulous job, and the letters are both persuasive and make for an entertaining read.

Next Tuesday we are interviewing prospective School Captains for 2024.  This is always an enjoyable experience, and we are always impressed by the calibre of students that put themselves forward. 

Conducting interviews is also a great learning experience for our current school captains who love being on the other side of the table.  The school captain selection process is very thorough, with decisions based on student letters, the interviews and feedback from class and specialist teachers.  Our aim is to have decisions made and communicated last thing on Tuesday.

Class Groupings 

On Monday the focus at our staff meeting was on developing class groupings for next year.  This work will continue over the coming few weeks. 

Thanks to parents for being very reasonable with placement requests, as this certainly increases the chances of us developing groupings that work for everyone (staff and students). As always, we aim to have a nice balance of gender, personalities and achievement levels in each class and do our best to make sure every student has a close friend or 2. 

Students will get to meet their teacher and classmates for 2024 on Thursday December 14.

ENERGY BREAKTHROUGH (EBT)

Good luck to our EBT Team, with the 2023 event scheduled for later this week.  Bryan White, Jayke Arnold and Jarrod Rogers have done an excellent job preparing the kids, which has included after school practice sessions. The kids are pumped and ready to go.  

This event couldn’t happen without the support of parents, and we’re delighted to have quite a few parents helping out in a range of ways. 

This is an amazing experience for the kids…something they won’t forget, so well done to the team for making this possible and we wish them the best of luck. 

We look forward to reporting on our exploits at EBT in next week’s newsletter.  Even better, tune into the school’s official Facebook page to view updates throughout Thursday and Friday. 

COXALL FAMILY SCHOLARSHIP FUND

Since announcing the establishment of the Coxall Family Scholarship Fund, made possible by a generous donation by Noel and Pam Coxall, we have a large number of grade 3-6 students excited about the prospect of applying to be part of one of the scholarship programs in 2024.   

To re-cap, the scholarship programs are as follows.

• Visual Arts Program – This program will be led by Liz Morgan and will give students the opportunity to build on existing and learn new artistic skills. Students will work on individual pieces but will also collaborate with others on joint projects. 
• Master Chef Program - This program will be led by Emily Gilliland, who works as a teacher aide at our school and is a trained chef.  Students will learn all about food preparation, reading recipes, how to use kitchen equipment and food safety.  Cooking something tasty will be a feature of every session.
• Music Program – This program will be led by Steve Skilbeck and Mark Muldoon, both accomplished musicians.  For this scholarship program, we’re looking for students that can sing or play an instrument, as we’re forming a school band. 
• Photography Program – This program will be led by an experienced photographer. This scholarship Program will help students build their capacity to take quality photos and to use technology to edit photos.

Students have until December 1 to submit applications for entry into a scholarship program.