What a great fortnight around the school and with the lingering and lengthy summer weather, we have enjoyed plenty of hot days. It is great to see so many hats worn at recess and lunchtime and students making responsible decisions to combat the hot weather. There is much going on around the school and we are in the steady pathway gearing up towards Easter. I hope your family enjoyed the long weekend break and had a chance to spend time together.

I am very appreciative of our teaching staff to support our current Naplan testing schedule and applaud the efforts of our Year 3 and 5 students during this testing schedule. I have also greatly enjoyed the chance teachers are providing students to have a very well earned break and some activity outside at the conclusion of these tests. I appreciate Naplan for the data sets that it provides our school as we look at improvement pathways in literacy, numeracy, teaching and learning but I place great emphasis on the understanding that the test is a one day point in time achievement test and does not celebrate many other elements of education and our bilingual school.

Thanks for taking a minute to read over some highlights from around the school.

Child Safe Standards

As a part of our 4 year school review process, the school undertakes a thorough review and independent audit of our child safe standards. Caulfield Primary School is committed to providing an environment where students are safe and feel safe.

Our child safety framework includes policies, codes and procedures that explain how we support and maintain the safety and wellbeing of our students and protect them from harm. These documents are available on our website: Child Safe Standards. We are also committed to continuous improvement of our child safety framework. We are currently reviewing our child safety policies and practices to ensure they are up-to-date and effective.

Our students and families are important partners in this process. We welcome your feedback or ideas on ways we can improve our approach to child safety and wellbeing. If you have any suggestions or comments, please contact myself (Edward Strain – Principal) on 9523 7932 or at edward.strain@education.vic.gov.au.

School Leaders

We had great pleasure in formally welcoming our Year 5/6 student leaders to their leadership roles at our assembly last week. Their leadership badges and a leadership certificate were presented by Morioka sensei, myself and we were lucky enough to be joined by the local member for Caulfield, Mr David Southwick.

Throughout the week our student leaders are working towards contributing to our newsletters and running their whole school assembly with a level of agency and initiative. They are continuing to lead in our school grounds and in our classrooms. I look forward to seeing them contributing to our school and supporting our students over the year ahead.

School Council

Our school council Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be held on Tuesday 18th March at 6:30pm, this provides an opportunity to acknowledge the work undertaken over the last 12 months and present our Annual Report and Annual Implementation Plan. The AGM provides an open invitation to our school community to attend and visitors are invited to join school council members in The Common Room at 6:30pm. Office bearers are formally identified for the role of President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary.

I thank our 2025/26 school council members – Rachel MacEwan (Vivien – Year 6), Libby Herman (Amelia – Year 2 and Oliver – Prep), Daniel Shaw (Leo Nulty - Prep) Sarah Browne (Baxter – Year 3), Miharu Morioka (Department of Education), Asami Onda (Department of Education), Kyoko Isono (Aki – Year 5 and Haru – Year 3), James Macky (Eloise – Year 6).

Student Free Day

Throughout today, we have hosted a professional learning day for all staff. This was designed to support teachers with developing curriculum knowledge aligned to the new Victorian curriculum and changes that have occurred throughout the last 8 months. Our English teaching staff have continued to build their skills in using SoundsWrite as our explicit Systematic Synthetic Phonics approach in all Prep – Year 2 classrooms and build on our literacy block of teaching to support this.

Our Year 3-6 team have led significant adjustments to their teaching programs, using rich texts and a structured, evidence-based approach to literacy. We are working with curriculum units designed by Ochre and adjusting our teaching flow with a much heavier focus on explicit teaching aligned to the science of learning.

Our Numeracy Team have had the opportunity to work with Dr Angela Rodgers developing teaching skills aligned to number knowledge, place value and embedding the fundamentals for students that then allow them to build into more complex learning tasks. The result of a student free day is that our staff are directly involved in pedagogical adjustments that benefit the teaching and learning programs offered to every child in our school.

JSC Leaders

Congratulations to our JSC leaders in our school this year:

Euna L – 1/2A
Shintaro S – 1/2B
Mathias P-P – 1/2C
Charli C – 1/2D
Eleanor C – 3/4A
Emma P – 3/4B
Isla H – 3/4C
Harper B – 3/4D
Aki M-I – 5/6A
Lucy S – 5/6B
Charlize W – 5/6C

We have ordered JSC Leadership Badges for these students and when they arrive we will present these at a special assembly. I look forward to working with our JSC Leaders throughout the year.

Farewell and Thank You

A big thank you and acknowledgement to Azka Inayah who is finishing up at our school today. Azka has worked at Caulfield Primary School for the last 3 ½ years in an education support role working with students and staff. She is a dedicated staff member who has developed strong relationships with our students and the respect of families and our staff. Azka is working towards completing her studies and moving into a teaching role over coming year. We wish Azka all the best in her next adventures and thank her for her contributions to our school.

We are fortunate enough to secure Branka Zarac to replace Azka, Branka has significant experience in education support and begins with us next week.

Hinamatsuri @ CPS

Thank you to our wonderful Parents and Friends Club (PFC) for supporting our students and allowing them to celebrate Hinamatsuri Day (also called Doll’s Day or Girls’ Day). It is annual celebration held on the 3rd March each year in Japan. Our students were fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to dress up and have their photos taken representing the mebina and obina. It was a very popular event and I thank our PFC for their initiative in supporting our students to recognise and learn about the day.

The start of the footy season means I once again live in perpetual disappointment over my football team (Carlton Blues) performances, well done to the Tigers on Thursday evening. I look forward to seeing you around the school over the coming week, enjoy a great weekend.

My Thanks,

Edward Strain

Principal

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