Principal's Message
Our children are our future...
Principal's Message
Welcome back to 2025! School begins for students next Wednesday, January 29 and all staff are keen to see their students, colleagues and community members again. I hope that your family are healthy and happy. If not, I hope that you are working your way towards wellness.
By every objective measure, our school consistently performs at an exceptional level. According to Department of Education metrics, we rank in the highest categories in both Curriculum and Wellbeing. Complementing these results, subjective indicators such as the Student, Staff, and Parent Opinion Surveys reflect similarly outstanding outcomes. We take great pride in this record and are committed to not only sustaining these achievements but surpassing them in 2025.
Every parent wants to improve their child's life to exceed that of their own. It is the hope of generations. In the modern day, where social media offers curated highlight reels of people's lives, this can set an unrealistic expectation. It is fair to expect that a child's school experience should be safe and happy. But that does not mean that every day of your child's life will be an ecstatic peak experience. This is fantasy.
Every human has good and bad days, positive and negative experiences. It is the human condition. Parents who temper their child's expectations around how life plays out generally have well adjusted and basically happy children. They teach their children that sometimes bad things happen and then advise them how to work through these issues as they occur. They remain realistic about life. Parents who react to a negative experience in their child's lives as though problems should never happen generally set their children up for an anxious adulthood. They are saying to their children, "Problems should never happen and, if they do, react with outrage and anger." This is not the pathway to a happy adult existence.
I will be advising staff to work hard and keep improving their craft. I will tell them they are imperfect and will make mistakes - just like their students. I will support them to be better in their craft through coaching. I will hold them to account for student outcomes and show them how to teach more effectively if students fall below benchmark.
But I will also tell staff to be realistic. They are humans with outside lives. They only have a certain amount of the day to reasonably dedicate to the craft and as long as that is done with integrity and honesty - then they will be supported and told they have done enough. I will tell them that sometimes kids have bad days. Sometimes kids don't treat each other kindly and we just have to work through those issues to get the best outcome we can. I will tell them that sometimes parents act irrationally out of misguided passion and to try to not take that personally.
Our goal will be to do the best with the resources we have in the time available. That doesn't include working 24/7. You cannot guarantee the outcome of a child - there are too many factors. But you can control your own efforts to be your best. In the course of human endeavour, there is always a bell curve of performance. Teaching and learning is no different. If your child has done his/her best - what else is there? Same for teachers.
I look forward to 2025 with great optimism. I want to set high benchmarks and goals without exceeding realism in what can be done in the world.
School Improvements
As you enter the school in 2025 you will notice more improvements. Huge amounts of work occurred over the summer with the entire ground floor carpet being torn up and relaid with more sensible colour and noise mitigating tiles. The end rooms on Levels 2, 3 and 4 have been completely refurbished to accommodate classrooms where once they were inadequate. It was a huge undertaking in a short period of time. I thank all involved.
I also want to thank the 86% of parents who were able/chose to contribute to the parent fees in 2024. The summer improvement work was directly funded by your generous donations. We could not have done it without you. I hope you all decide to pay your parent contributions in 2025 (if you are financially able to) so we can continue to provide the world class education that we do.
In the next few weeks, we will be working to appoint a First Aid Officer to work in the administration space near the Sick Bay. Their job will be to focus on student first aid and parent follow up. It is incredibly difficult for Emma and Kirsty to complete all of the loops involved in first aid when their primary job is office administration. The appointment of this First Aid Officer is possible due to your fee contributions so we again thank you in advance for choosing to pay these fees. We, again, cannot do such things without your financial support.
Please keep supporting us financially in 2025 - good things happen as a result and every cent you give goes STRAIGHT BACK to your children. Details about how to pay those fees are on the next page.
Newsletter Contents
The vast majority of this newsletter contains profiles of our wonderful staff who will work with your child in 2025. Please take the time to read these profiles put together by each member of the team. They work passionately for the sake of your children - it would be respectful to take the time to get to know them as human beings. We are all in this together.
New Year Link
It may be a good idea to save the link below which is a "Return to School in 2025" resource. It may assist those starting as new parents or those new to the system in understanding how schooling works in Victoria in 2025.