Principal's Message

Principal's Message

Last week I put a call out to our community to bring forward ideas to support schools and children from devastated flood areas. Grade 4 student, Samuel P, responded to this call by sending through three wonderful ideas for our consideration. During the week, I met with our student leaders to review his suggestions. We were all so impressed by his thoughtfulness and creativity making it tough to choose which one to adopt, however given the success of our recent Book Swap, it was hard to move beyond the idea of inviting families to donate books to support schools replenish their school library resources. 

This week, we will be having further discussions with Sam, our leaders and sharing information of where you can drop-off your pre-loved books. We will also try and confirm which schools might be most impacted and ensure you all know which schools we will be supporting.

Well done, Sam! Your community spirit and care for others is magnificent!

Student Placement

Over the last few weeks, I have received dozens of emails from parents re their child's class placement in 2023. I enjoyed reading them and I am also grateful for the respectful tone and level of thoughtfulness parents adopted when sharing feedback. I also noted some trends that suggested that there may be misconceptions about the process we adopt when creating the classes.  Admittedly, there are a few changes being made this year so it is a perfect opportunity to share with everyone what will be taking place throughout the remainder of Term 4 to ensure transparency and understanding.  

The process we will be adopting is extensive and very thorough (see attachment below for summary of events). I have also responded to some of the key themes that came through.

Friendships

All students will have an opportunity to nominate at least 5 peers they wish to be placed with. We are endeavouring to ensure each child has at least one friend in their class. 

Disability and Wellbeing Needs

Classroom teachers and Student Wellbeing leaders will be involved throughout the entire process to ensure individual student needs are considered. Several opportunities for handover and sharing of information between 2022 teachers to 2023 teachers will take place. 

Teacher Allocation

We place trust and confidence in all our teachers, recognising that each one brings diverse skills, personality type and strengths, regardless of experience, which is important for students to experience throughout their schooling. We carefully place teachers to classes taking into consideration student needs, skills, academics, backgrounds etc. Where a child has particular needs (e.g. high ability, engagement, neurodiverse, behaviour) teachers will be provided this information throughout the handover process and supported by Leaders to ensure the students receive the most suitable instruction, guidance and care. Families will also have opportunity to provide information to their child's teacher in 2023 at the commencement of the new year. 

Term 4 Catch-up Phone Calls

During Week 5 and 6 of this term (Monday 31st October to Friday 11th November) parents can book in a Term 4 ‘Catch Up Phone Call’ 

If you would like to book an appointment with your child’s teacher or any of the specialist teachers please do this via Compass Conference bookings. 

The default form of communication will be the teacher phoning you; however if you would prefer to pop into the classroom for this meeting please just email the teacher directly to let them know. 

If the available interview times are not feasible for your schedule please contact your child’s teacher directly to work out another day and time that is mutually suitable. Thank you for your support.

We value school and home partnerships and appreciate the role this plays in enhancing children’s school experience and enriching student learning, academic outcomes and wellbeing. Parents are vital partners in education and we look meeting with you.

School Council Survey: Specialist Subject Offering

Thank you to the school community who shared their feedback to assist with the structure of the 2023 specialist program. We received a wide variety of responses from parents, teachers and students which will be shared at School Council and leadership meetings to assist with developing the future curriculum structure and our work force plan.

As per Department guidelines, primary school teachers in 2023 have 21.5 face to face hours with their classroom students each week; which leaves 3.5 hours to be made up of specialist subjects; such as P.E, Art, STEM and LOTE. This can be a challenging process for schools to create a model of specialist subjects for this limited allocation of time and also ensuring that we can staff these positions with inspiring and engaging teachers who have the expertise to teach the chosen specialist subjects. 

When developing model of specialist subjects, a priority for our school is to ensure we can staff any of the selected subjects with high quality educators. Often there can be particular specialist subjects that a school would like to run but this isn’t possible because there is a lack of availability of best fit teaching staff to hire for this position. 

We are fortunate to have many high-quality specialist teachers already on staff and look forward to exploring your feedback to determine priorities and opportunities for our program offerings in line with our ability to accommodate these within the funding model received for in 2023.

Any parents who would still like to contribute their feedback and ideas to School Council for the structure of our 2023 specialist program can do so via the link is below and this closes on Monday. 

Thank you

https://forms.office.com/r/CDg4HRm3P3