School Council Update

Hi SKIPPS families,

My name is Hannah Liddeaux and I am the School Council Vice President. I have been a parent at the school for almost seven years and a member of school council for three. My partner Lani and I have four children currently at the school, Jude (5/6A), Dash (3/4G), and twins Alfie and Otis (Foundation J). I am a freelance theatre director and I teach theatre at The VCA at the University of Melbourne. I have a particular interest in access and inclusion in the arts and have worked with many arts organisations across Melbourne to remove barriers to participation for young people with disabilities, cultural and linguistic difference and economic difficulty.

At our meeting on July 31st we discussed the operational challenges of our specialist classrooms being out of use. We were able to acknowledge the fast response of our leadership team in finding solutions to this obstacle and share our gratitude with the teaching staff who have accommodated the move to new locations with such professionalism and resourcefulness. 

We had a wonderful response to our Team Kids Survey from the school community. This gave us vital information to discuss the future tenure of our current provider as their contract is up for renewal later in the year. Key findings from the survey included the need for a more robust and age-appropriate program for the upper primary years. We also identified the need for greater organisation and planning from the Team-Kids management team to improve the program and the care of shared school spaces. We determined that we would form a working party moving forward that would guide a tenure process later in the year. If anyone would like to be part of that group, please get in touch with Neil. 

We heard updates from representatives of our subcommittees and discussed the success of newly refreshed SKIPPA initiatives such as soup and sushi. We heard from Education and Policy about some updates they made to the attendance policy and had a broader discussion about attendance trends across Victoria. In finance we

discussed some of the ways the new disability inclusion funding model shifts our budget reporting and spoke about the idea of generating a dynamic fundraising focus each year to support a school grounds strategy. Many of us expressed our excitement at the upcoming parent trivia evening to be held at the St Kilda Bowls Club. 

Neil shared a report with us detailing our 2024 NAPLAN results. We discussed the revised system of reporting assessment results and some of the changes to the testing itself. We looked at the impact this might have had on a trend of lower scores across SE Victoria. We also discussed the new timeline for testing (March instead of May) and Neil spoke about the need for some tweaks to the 2025 calendar to accommodate this (eg. 5/6 camp). Neil highlighted that some of our school’s 2024 results were not what we had hoped for and was eager to unpack these with staff. We spoke about recent data around small group instruction and had a broader conversation about the new Victorian teaching and learning model with explicit teaching at its core. 

Each year Victorian Government School students from years 4-12 participate in an Attitudes to School Survey. This provides data to schools that hopes to highlight the student perspective. This year’s results were presented at our meeting this week. They are always fascinating and speak to the strong community relationships we have built at SKIPPS. For the last few years students have shown enthusiasm for the learning relationships they have formed, and this is a testament to the dynamic and dedicated teaching staff we have. It is always exciting to hear the way staff respond to these surveys and their enthusiasm for the opportunities if gives them to reflect on their practice.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday 4th September at 6.30pm in the staff room and we encourage you to get in touch with any queries or suggestions you might have. As always, we’d love to have as many parents as possible at our subcommittee meetings. The times of these meetings are in the newsletter, and all you need to do is turn up! 

Finally, please feel free to approach any of us in the ‘yard’ before or after school. We are always up for a chat and would love to hear any ideas, thoughts or musings you would like to share.

Hannah Liddeaux