Mr Irwin's Message

Hi families, and welcome to this week’s newsletter. This week’s newsletter message will be simulcast as an email as it’s predominantly an update regarding Remote Learning.

As announced yesterday by our Premier, Remote and Flexible learning is set to continue across Victoria until the end of term 3. The Premier did add there was the possibility of eased restrictions in regional Victoria as early as next week, which would be fantastic, but for now we will push ahead with Remote and Flexible learning until advised otherwise.

Families that have been requiring on-site support are asked to email me their new work permits and re-confirm days they require on-site care. Please make contact with us regarding this so we are aware if your circumstances remain the same or change and can organise suitable supervision ratios accordingly.

NAPLAN 2021

If there’s one shot in the arm (pardon the pun) I can give to our community at this time, it’s that our NAPLAN results have arrived and they are truly results our entire community should be proud of. Whilst we don’t advertise NAPLAN tests to students as the be all and end all they are still an important measure of our success as a school and validate the approaches and methods we use. The added reassurance they provide for the last few years is that students have made progress in a time that learning has been extremely challenging.

The first aspect of NAPLAN data worth celebrating was that Victoria topped the country in every single Primary School category, despite having the most days of remote and flexible learning of any state, what an achievement!

Further to this, the growth and high achievement of Teesdale PS students was remarkable. In fact, two of the tests we are most scrutinised on at a regional level being the Year 5 Reading and Year 5 Numeracy test, our amazing students achieved stronger growth results and a higher percentage of students in the highest bracket of achievers than any NAPLAN test since 2016.

These results are remarkable and our community should be so proud of themselves. To achieve best ever results over the past few years in the highest performing state is a credit to our parents for the effort they’ve put in at home, a credit to our staff for the high quality remote learning they’ve provided and of course a credit to our students for the way they’ve engaged and conducted themselves during this time too. These results are incredible and truly worthy of celebration. There are still students who will need additional support when we return to school, and this will continue to be a focus for us not only in Term 4 but into planning and preparation for 2022 as well.

For now though, let’s celebrate these amazing results!

Bye for now.

Sam Irwin

Principal

Healthy Lunch Box Choices

For more information go to: https://heas.health.vic.gov.au/schools/healthy-lunchboxes