Principal's Message

This week, our three choirs (Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3) will be performing at the Armidale Eisteddfod. In this fortnight, we also mark Reconciliation Week and wish our competitors the very best at the zone cross country.

Food Fair

The P&C Multicultural Food Fair is on next Thursday! Don't miss this highlight of the year, as your next chance to be involved will be in 2027. Tickets can be secured here. The P&C is also hoping to lock in a couple of last minute vendors. Check out the P&C section of this newsletter for details.

Plant donation

Thank you to Cedar Nursery and the Faint Family for the generous donation of many plants for our garden club to place in the pebbles garden boxes. Our student gardeners enjoyed planting these and we all look forward to the plants maturing and enhancing the pebbled area.

NAPLAN

In the last newsletter, I noted that preliminary NAPLAN data had been received by the school ahead of more detailed data and individual reports in early Term 3. We still await both writing results and normative data to provide a point of comparison to similar schools and the state average. However, we do know our average achievement band on all other NAPLAN assessments. 

Each student's scores fall into one of the four proficiency bands of 'needs additional support', 'developing', 'strong' or 'exceeding'. The average score for Ben Venue in each of the assessments (excluding writing), was within the 'strong' band.

Moderation ahead of reporting and a new reporting template

Teachers are in the thick of moderating student assessment data to ensure consistency of teacher judgement, ahead of reporting to families at the end of this term. Last term, I provided information on our new reporting template, updated to reflect the new state-wide guidelines. The new template aims to enhance readability and clarity regarding each student's effort and achievement in each subject. All reports will retain the general comment and student self-reflection. Reports will be provided to families directly by email and via School Bytes in the final week of Term 2.

Cam Pryce

Principal