A message from the Principal

Listening to student voice

During term 2 each year, students in Years 4-6 complete a survey called the student 'Attitudes to School Survey'. The AtoSS is an annual student survey offered by the Department of Education to assist schools to gain an understanding of students' perceptions and experience of school. Students are asked about their thoughts and feelings in relation to their school, their learning, peer relationships, resilience, bullying, health and wellbeing, physical activity, and life in general. 

At SKiPPS, we value student voice as a means to improving student engagement, wellbeing and quality instruction and are conducting this survey to find out what our students think of their school. 

The information is invaluable in helping us to understand student views and to help us to improve each student's time at our school. 

The data we are provided with allows us to understand our students' views compared to those at 'similar schools' (with a like socio-economic situation), 'network schools' (in our geographic network of schools) and also the state average.

Understanding where our students feel we are doing well (and where we could improve) is invaluable in deciding where we should focus attention and what programs and initiatives we should put in place.

Whilst the survey is anonymous, the way that the data is reported allows us to understand the different views of students in different year levels and of different genders.

For instance, looking at our 2022 survey data, we can see some key differences between the sense of connectedness to school felt by our Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6 students.

Understanding trends like this enable us to explore responses further and better direct our programs and resources to address needs.

A similar survey (with similarly presented results) is also run each year for parents and carers and for our staff. Taken together, this data provides a good perspective from our entire school community that goes beyond academic results and helps to drive much of our improvement work.

Parents of children in years 4-6 will have received a Compass notification this week providing more information about the survey and I encourage you to contact me if you have any questions.

Neil Scott

Principal