2025 School Theme - Why Team, Why Team Westbreen

Principal’s Message

Dear Westbreen PS Families,

We have less than two weeks to go for 2025! It is an exciting time of year and all the students are looking ahead to what we have planned for the last two weeks of school. As I mentioned at assembly last week, we are keen to have a positive finish to the end of the year and maintain high standards and expectations.

Respectful, Safe, Engaged: Shared Expectations to Support Student Behaviour

The Respectful, safe, engaged: shared expectations to support student behaviour statement was released on the 10th of November 2025 by the Department of Education to support positive student behaviour in Victorina government schools.

When schools, families and students work together, we achieve the best outcomes. These partnerships are essential to creating school environments that support all students belong, learning and thrive.

At Westbreen Primary School all students are expected to be respectful, safe, and engaged. These behaviours help make our school a place where everyone can achieve their best. Over the weekend, all families received information regarding the behaviour expectations for the remaining three weeks of the year. Thank you to those parents who have shared this letter with their child/children and for your support of these expectations.

How Parents and Carers Can Help?

As a parent and carer, you play a vital role in helping your child to understand and meet shared behaviour expectations.

By modelling and encouraging positive behaviour, you can help your child build the skills and habits they need to be successful at school.

You can see the Respectful. safe, engaged: shared expectations to support student behaviour statement on the department's website. This outlines the shared expectations and how you can help. We will also be updating our Statement of Values and School Philosophy (which was reviewed in May 2025) in the new year to reflect these new behavioural expectations.

Further information, resources and support are available at Supporting positive behaviour in Victorian government schools.

Student Leader Presentation

At assembly this week, we have the pleasure of presenting our leaders for 2026 to the school community. It's such a special occasion to acknowledge our next group of leaders who will do an outstanding job next year. The calibre of leader we have for next year is phenomenal and we have so excited to celebrate that on Wednesday.

Semester Reports

We are approaching the end of semester two which means your students will be receiving another semester report. This will be made live in the final week of the term and will provide judgements on student achieve in the key learning areas that are covered each week. The end of year report provides the chance to celebrate all the learning success and to reflect on all the achievements in 2025. We encourage you to read the report with your child to share the learning journey and to discuss all the amazing things that have occurred in 2025.

2026 Staff Teams

We have been working very hard on the workforce plan for 2026. We are extremely lucky at Westbreen to have outstanding teachers in every classroom who provide excellence learning experiences for all our students. Our 2026 foundation team has been confirmed, and they successfully ran the Foundation Information session this week. It was another huge success, and the 2026 foundation students will have a fantastic first year of school at Westbreen. Adria Quinn, Lauren Scalzo and Dilara Sahin will form our foundation team in 2026 and will continue the wonderful work from 2025. The remainder of the staff teams will be announced in the final week of the term once our Step-Up day has concluded.

Water Safety

VICSWIM is a 5-day intensive learn to swim and water safety program for children aged 4 to 12 years, run in the summer holidays. VICSWIM is particularly helpful for those who may not access swimming lessons regularly. The Victorian Government subsidises the program, which is run by Aquatics and Recreation Victoria.

Program details

Dates: Monday 5 January to Friday 23 January 2026

Time: 5 lessons, 30 minutes each

Location: at 140 venues across the state. To find your nearest location, refer to VICSWIM 2026 venues

Cost: $43 per child for the week.

For more information and to book (log in required), refer to the VICSWIM website.

Social Media

From 10 December 2025, the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 will require social media platforms to:

prevent children and young people under 16 from having a social media account
deactivate or freeze existing accounts held by people under 16.

Delaying access to social media protects the health and wellbeing of young people and gives them extra time to build real world connections and digital literacy skills.

The responsibility will be on the social media platforms, not parents, carers, children or schools, to implement these new restrictions.

Most popular social media platforms will be age restricted. These include Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Reddit and YouTube.

Messaging services and online games, as well as apps and platforms that support health and education, can still be used.

How to help under 16's prepare for the change

Parents and carers play an important role in supporting their children to be safe online.

To help get under 16s ready for the social media minimum age requirements, you can go to the eSafety website to learn more about the social media age restrictions and find tips on how to talk about social media age restrictions with young people.

What the change means for our school

At our school, most age-restricted social media platforms are blocked for student use on the school network. Our school allows student access to YouTube in a logged-out state. However, this access is restricted so mature content cannot be viewed and is used for educational purposes.

To keep up to date about the new social media age restrictions, visit the eSafety website and subscribe to their newsletter.

Transition to 2026

It's that time of the year when we start preparing and organising class placements for 2026. This process is crucial as we want to ensure that each student is in an environment that supports their learning needs.

We will begin by grouping students based on their friendships, using a sociogram filled in by the students as stated through communication this week. Your support in having preliminary conversations with your child about this is greatly appreciated. We believe involving students, parents, and staff in this process will result in the best outcome for our students.

Here are the criteria we consider when establishing classes:

The children's individual learning capabilities
The known social, emotional, and physical stages of the individual child
Friendship groupings, ensuring that each student is placed with at least one friend from their sociogram
Balancing the number of males and females in each class
Addressing the needs of English as an additional language learners and other special needs
Creating classes with similar educational and behavioural profiles
Anticipating growth in class numbers
Ensuring compatibility of sub-groupings
Considering the students' ability to cope with change.

We will be having a Step Up Day in the final week of the term where students will find out their teacher for 2026 and who will be in their class. This will occur during the final session of the day and will be a highlight of the final week of 2025.

Last Day of School

Our final day of the school year will be Friday the 19th of December, and we will be finishing at 1:15pm. We look forward to celebrating the final day of 2025 with everyone and know it will be a great opportunity to reflect on all the successes of 2025.

Daniel Taylor

Acting Principal

The Victorian Government acknowledges Aboriginal Traditional Owners of Country throughout Victoria and pays respect to their cultures and Elders past, present and emerging.

Student of the Week