Dear Parents and Carers,

As we commence the final month of the year, we begin to look ahead to 2025 when our current Year 5 students will be in their final year of primary school. This is the year in which these students take on greater responsibility as school leaders. While it is made clear that all students have a role to play as leaders, a percentage of students will be offered specific leadership positions.

While this is an exciting time for staff, students and their families, it is also a time that can be challenging. One of the great features of Burwood East PS is our high quality students. The Year 5 students this year have shown they can be mature, hardworking young people who fully understand our five school values and how to live by them. Selecting only a small number of students to receive a specific leadership role is difficult.

Last week we were once again fortunate to listen to a range of speeches from our student cohort as to why they should be elected as one of the school leadership positions.

Please join us at assembly on Monday morning to hear our school captain speeches for 2025. We wish Rhys, Tyler, Kavish, Adrian, Sathvik, Felicia, Lucy, Silvia, Hunar, Jacqueline and Isobel all the best. The school student body will then vote, based on their knowledge of the applicants and their speeches.

Colour Run 2024

Last week BEPS students, staff and parents joined together for our Colour Run. The weather was perfect as students donned white t-shirts in preparation for lots of colour and water.

Everyone had such a great afternoon, filled with bright smiles and bright colours, as students ran through various colour and water stations. There was lots of lively laughter and a buzzing atmosphere. Our school raised over $14,000 and in doing so raised $9000 for our library/book upgrades in 2025. Thank you for the amazing support from our Parents Association and helpers on the day, making this event a highlight for the year.

Congratulations to our top ten students who raised the most money. These students formed the ‘Slime Squad’ and got to start the event by throwing slime at their peers.

School Performance Report

Our school leadership have completed an end-of-year assessment of our 2024 Annual Improvement Plan, with this monitoring and report completed in SPOT (the departmental Strategic Planning Online Tool).

In reviewing our progress and successes, we are excited to share with community the achievement of a 'High' overall performance rating in the Department of Education’s recently released annual School Performance Report. Schools are categorised in of four domains – High, Improving, Medium and Developing comprising a 50% weighting on learning outcomes and 50% on wellbeing outcomes.

This new report and rating provides a yearly opportunity for schools to review outcomes, improvement cycles and look to celebrate the work undertaken whilst aligning improvement priorities for the coming year. For our efforts to be recognised with a high rating is a wonderful achievement and a great credit to the work that occurs in our school from our teaching staff, education support, administration and leadership team.

Workforce Planning

At this time of the year, teaching and non-teaching staff have the opportunity to apply for positions state-wide and it is often very late in proceedings when we are able to confirm final arrangements. Over the last month, the leadership team have looked at various structures for next year, with this mainly determined by the Student Resource Package (SRP) staffing budget we receive.

The Workforce Planning at this stage (based on 540 students starting in January) is for a 24 class structure.

Foundation 2 classes

Year 01- 3 classes

Year 02- 3 classes

Year 03- 4 classes

Year 04 -4 classes

Year 05- 4 classes

Year 06 - 4 classes

School Saving Bonus

SSB funds will soon be transferred to schools via our High Yield account, with the total payment calculated based on enrolment numbers as of 15 November 2024. Parents and carers will have access to the SSB starting Tuesday 26 November.

I congratulate Vikki and the admin team for the preparations on this roll out, appreciating their mindset of seeing the benefit for parents and carers who will really benefit from this $400 which is timely cost-of-living relief.

Yours in Partnership,

Darren

Uniting Church Outreach Program