Principal's Report

When I was teaching in the classroom, I always felt like the Labour Day Weekend was an important landmark in the year. We were long enough into the year to have established the basis of strong relationships, and we were embedding positive learning and playing habits. Schools work very hard in this area in the opening weeks of each academic year, and I have been pleased to see strong rigour and routine in all our classrooms. I hope everyone took the extra time to rest, reflect and get ready for the closing weeks of Term 1. 

Led by our wonderful Drum Corps parent representative Sarah Draffan, our school community fundraised above and beyond what was expected in our ‘ANZAC Day Biscuits’ bake sale late last week. All funds raised will go towards replacing berets for our students in Drum Corp, so that they match the smart new uniforms that have been purchased in the last couple of years. We take great pride in our Drum Corps and wish them well as they prepare for their signature event of the year, the ANZAC Day parade, on Saturday 25th April. 

Over the last few years, we have worked diligently to lift the profile of our school in the community. We have re-written our school vision and motto, re-imagined our school values, lifted the physical environment with a new playground and new shade sails, updated classrooms, updated our website, newsletter and school branding, re-painted, re-carpeted and so much more! And of course, we are incredibly fortunate to be delivering a competition-grade basketball stadium with a library, performing arts space and food servery across the next twelve months or so. We want to highlight this in some more modern ways, and as such are continuing our work with ‘School Presence’ to introduce a social media presence to our school, via official school Instagram and Facebook pages. 

For our school, a social media presence will ensure that the school and the broader community can celebrate everything that makes our school special. It will not be an official form of communication and will not replace any of our current communication practices. On occasion, we would like to include students in our posts, and we also understand that, for some families, they would prefer their children not to be featured. We will work carefully with our whole community to ensure we share content respectfully, with correct permissions sought and appropriate policies shared where required. 

This week we had a small group of staff participate in our lead training sessions, and we will be sharing further information with you via Compass regarding this in coming weeks, with the hope to be launching the pages during Term 2. If you have any questions about this, please don’t hesitate to see me on the gates or drop me an email here.   

You may have already heard (and may hear more soon) about proposed stop work action from the Australian Education Union (AEU). I expect to be able to communicate more with you regarding this across the next week.

Thanks for your ongoing support and keep doing your best.

Rohan Cooper

Principal