A message from Emily

Dear parents and carers,

Welcome back for Term 3. It is hard to believe that we are over halfway through the school year. This term we have lots of amazing things coming up for our school community so make sure you check out our Important Dates page and the images below.

We also welcome Laura Steel to our St John's community as a 2 Hub educator joining Jenna and Mairead. Laura has already settled into our community and built beautiful relationships with the children. We look forward to getting to know Laura more throughout the rest of year. 

During Semester 1, we shortened break times to two 30-minute sessions. This change was implemented to align with our EBA updates, address behavioural concerns and injuries occurring after 40-minute breaks, and create more space for popular playground games. While we've seen a reduction in behaviour incidents and improved playground access, we recognised that a 30-minute first break was insufficient for staff to take a proper break. We believe the introduction of the split second break this year has contributed to less injuries and behaviour incidents so this will continue. Additionally, many students expressed their support for longer break times through persuasive writing.

The St John's Consultative Committee gathered data and explored solutions that wouldn't impact our parent community in relation to start and finish times. As a result, we've implemented the new Semester Two Daily Timetable. We will carefully monitor the impact of this change to determine its suitability for next year. We value highly the input of both our children and Educators to ensure success for learning and positive wellbeing.

This term will see the completion of our school improvement cycle for 2020 - 2024 with our School Review taking place during Week 7. Kylie Graham is our external reviewer and will be onsite 26, 28 and 29th August. We look forward to sharing our journey with her and hearing her recommendations for our next school improvement cycle. This term also means it is time for families to share their input through the 2024 MACSSIS survey. Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools – School Improvement Surveys (MACSSIS) are conducted annually for schools in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne. This year’s MACSSIS window is from Monday 2 September to Friday 20 September 2024. Each family will receive access information to complete the survey. Last year we only had 23 families complete the survey so it would be amazing if we could double it for this year. We use this data to inform us in decision making on where to prioritise our efforts, time and money and know what things we are doing well in order to continue doing them. See video clip below for further information around the purpose of the MACSSIS Survey.

With our first semester of reporting and assessment completed for 2024 I will be looking for feedback and input from staff and families in the coming weeks and would love to hear from families, your experiences. The aim is to create a document that outlines what assessment and reporting looks like at St John's that can be shared and provide clarity for all members of the community. 

Building/Hall update: At this stage there is nothing to report other than confirmation that we should know by the end of August if we were successful with our grant application for supplementary funding. 

Warm wishes

Emily