Principal's Panorama

"For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.” Psalm 62:5

Welcome to Term Four.

Term Four is the term of 'tying the year together', where the efforts made thoughout the year are evaluated against School Imporvement Plans and student academic achievement assessed against curriculum content and 2026 is no different.

This term has seen our Transition Program commence, we eagerly await our water familiarisation program commencing with Beach to Bush program as our young people continue their focus on faith, wellbeing and academic enrichment. 

Stay Connected – Turn On Your Compass Notifications!

At St Mary of the Angels, we want all families to feel informed, included and connected to the life of our school.

We encourage all parents and carers to turn on notifications for the Compass app so that important school updates, upcoming events, reminders and announcements are not missed.

Compass is our key communication channel, helping families stay up to date with what is happening across our school community.

By enabling notifications, you can receive timely information about school activities, celebrations, changes to arrangements and other important messages.

How to turn on notifications:

1. Open your phone's Settings.
2. Select Notifications (or Apps, then Compass).
3. Find Compass and enable Allow Notifications.
4. Check your notification preferences within the Compass app, where available.

As we continue strengthening our communication and partnerships with families, we encourage everyone to take a moment to check their settings.

Staying informed helps us stay connected, and strong connections help our school community flourish!

Myschool Survey:

The highest results seen at St Mary of the Angels since the survey commenced in 2017.

The MySchool satisfaction survey is the same survey that has been completed annually in every school in the Diocese since 2017. 

Sometimes known as the "My School Survey" or the "Happy School survey"; it is an anonymous survey to help the schools and system drive strategic improvements.

Based on the perceptions of staff, students and parent/carers on key areas of school life.

The data is collected via email survey and is collated by the "Survey My School" Team (external to the Diocese), the data (numerical and comments) is then sent to Armidale Catholic Schools so that the data is completely unidentifiable to specific families/children. 

The Leadership Team at the Armidale Catholic Schools then screen the comments for child protection issues and to remove personal comments. 

The data is then input into the Data Ecosystem so that educators, system leaders, principals etc. can see the data for each question and use this to direct their AIP etc for the following year. 

We are delighted to share that our My School Satisfaction Surveys are the highest since the survey commenced at St Mary of the Angels in 2018.  

 The Armidale Catholic School system and its schools work incredibly hard to ensure our communities receive the best possible outccomes for their young people. These results indicate the effects of the hard work of the school leadership team, School Advisory Council, SMOTA SHAs, Parents/Carers to build greater partnership in our school and system has started to pay off! 

We look forward to seeing these results being demonstrated in the data of student academic achievement.

Congratulations to the Ahumada's: 

Congratulations to Mrs Tiffany Ahumada and Luis on the safe arrival of a beautiful daughter on Saturday. Isla, a dear little sister for Jasper and Aiden.

We cannot wait to see her!

Building Works:

Building works for the remediation of GLA One and GLA Two will start with the delivery of a toilet block later this week! Once this is delivered, our builders can commence their securing of the site to begin remediation from inside the building.

I will share a timeline of works when the construction team and engineer meet with Armidale Catholic School staff later this week.

RealTalk: 

The RealTalk Team joined S3 and S2 last week for their annual  Armidale Diocese road trip.

The team worked with Stage Three on puberty, life and relationships and our Stage Two students on keeping themselves protected in the Digital World.

Parent Enagement Network

At St Mary of the Angels, we recognise that strong relationships between home and school are at the heart of a thriving Catholic school community. When families feel connected, welcomed and valued, our young people and community benefit.

Earlier this year, we established our Parent Engagement Network (PEN) with a shared purpose:

To foster positive communication, strong relationships and a welcoming community for all families.

The establishment of our PEN WhatsApp Community has been an important first step, providing families with another opportunity to connect, share information and support one another. However, our vision for PEN extends well beyond a digital communication group.

Our next step is to turn connection into participation and participation into genuine partnership.

The PEN provides opportunities for parents and carers to feel part of school life, contribute their ideas, build relationships with other families and actively support the community we are creating together.

This might include:

• Connecting through school events: Bringing families together through social gatherings, celebrations, community activities and opportunities to share in the life of our school.
• Strengthening parent voice: Creating opportunities for families to share ideas, offer feedback and contribute to conversations about our school community.
• Supporting learning and faith: Inviting families to engage in opportunities that strengthen their understanding of their children's learning, wellbeing and faith formation.
• Building a culture of belonging: Ensuring that all families, whether new to our school or longstanding members of our community, feel welcomed, included and connected.

Importantly, parent engagement does not always mean volunteering or attending every event. We understand that families have different commitments, capacities and circumstances. 

Engagement can take many forms, from attending a school celebration or sharing an idea to participating in a conversation, supporting learning at home or simply making another family feel welcome.

As we look towards 2027, we hope to continue developing PEN as a meaningful bridge between home and school, where communication is two-way, relationships are strengthened and every family has an opportunity to contribute.

Our school is more than a place where children come to learn. It is a community of faith, learning and belonging, and each family has an important place within it.

We invite all parents and carers to be part of this next chapter of our Parent Engagement Network. Together, we can continue building a connected, welcoming and flourishing St Mary of the Angels community.

Sisters of St Joseph in the Armidale Diocese.

As you may be aware, Mary MacKillop (Australia's first and only saint) responded to the request of Bishop Torregiani and the first Sisters arrived in the Armidale Diocese 1880. Since then, 590 Sisters have ministered firstly in schools then build their mission in the parishes of the Armidale Diocese. 

On Saturday 14 November 2026, a Mass of Thanksgiving will be offered for the Sisters of Saint Joseph, at St Patrick's West Tamworth who at the end of this year will no longer have a presence in formal ministry in the Diocese.  Sr Neisha and Sr Dora are leaving Mungindi ending the presence of Josephite Sisters in the diocese after many years of wonderful service. 

The Josephites are celebrating their time in the Armidale with a Mass of Thanksgiving at St Patrick's West Tamworth followed by a light lunch on November 14. I sent a COMPASS Newsfeed last week, just in case parents/carers were wanting to take their children down to the Mass and light luncheon.

Science in S1 

In Science this term, our Year One students have been looking at the Earth’s resources and changes that occur with those resources!

On Friday, I was lucky enough to be able to take this wonderful group of students for their science lesson.  After looking at a prompt asking “where ice cream comes from” (not the supermarket freezer), the children discussed the different ingredients ice cream and the Earth’s resources that go to making these ingredients possible.

For example, cream from separating cows milk (needing water and feed for cows to produce the milk), sugar from sugar cane, vanilla essence from vanilla bean pods.

After being able to identify the ingredients and why they are important, we got to make ice cream!

Using ice cubes, we added salt crystals which lowers the freezing point of the salty solution, because of the lower freezing point, the ice starts to melt and pulls heat from the cream, sugar and vanilla mixture inside a ziplock bag. This causes a change in state of the cream mixture from liquid to solid! We learnt we had to keep squishing the bags and moving the ice or we would not get smooth ice cream.. We would get a big block of it. Check out these impressed faces below!

World Teachers Day

On Friday, we celebrated World Teacher's Day.  Usually celebrated annually on the 5th October , this year due to school holidays it was held on the last Friday of October. Teachers make a difference in the lives of children and young people everyday.  This year's theme was 'Shine a light on Teachers' and aims to celebrate all of the efforts that teachers make towards the improvement of student wellbeing, academic growth and faith development.  We thank all of our teachers across the Diocese and the world for everything that they do for our schools and young people.

Beach to Bush

Monday 9th of November will see the whole school participate in a Beach to Bush session.  Run by Surf Life Saving New South Wales, is an educational program which supports primary school children to understand beach/ocean and inland water safety.  Our young people will learn about general beach safety, sun safety, rips and waves, sea creatures, basic first aid, rescues, getting help from a lifeguard and how to apply some of these skills to their inland water ways! We look forward to having the team here for a program that has been running for over 30 years!

Notice of AGM and Election of the Executive Committee

 Reminder that, we hereby provide additional notice of the School Advisory Council Annual General Meeting which will be held tonight at 6:00 pm on November 2nd 2026. 

Current Members:

Ex-officio Members

Principal: Zoe Nugent

Parish Priest (Administrator): Father Stephen O’Shea

2026 SAC Members:

Chairperson:   Mitchell Hope

Secretary: Jeanice McCosker

Staff: Eleisha Outridge

General Committee Member: Penny Furphy

General Committee Member: Rita Williams

General Committee Member: Josephine Cruickshank  

Nominations for general committee roles were called for through the school newsletter and COMPASS and/or on the school website 8 weeks prior to the Meeting.  A nomination form will be provided with this call for nomination and will also be available from the School. Please note there will be  one general committee role available for nomination and all executive positions (Chairperson and Secretary) will be up for re-election (annual basis).

Summer Uniform – Looking Ahead to 2027

A reminder that 2026 is the final year of our transition period to our new school uniform. We have deliberately allowed families time to transition gradually, recognising the cost involved in replacing uniform items and allowing existing items to be worn while they were still serviceable.

From the beginning of 2027, our new school uniform will be implemented in full, and all students will be expected to wear the advertised uniform which can be purchased through Alinta online or at the uniform shop located at O'Connor Catholic College.

At the end of this term, we will stocktake our second-hand uniform supplies. 

• Older uniform items that no longer match our current uniform will be removed from circulation and donated, 
• while current uniform items that remain in good condition will be retained in our second-hand clothing pool for families to access.

We encourage families who have outgrown current uniform items in good condition to consider donating them to our second-hand pool. 

This is a wonderful way of supporting other families in our school community while also reducing unnecessary waste.

Thank you to our families for your support throughout the transition. Wearing our school uniform with pride contributes to our young people’s sense of identity, equality and belonging and helps us present ourselves as one school community.

Zoe Nugent

Principal