Acting Principal's

Message

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Parent Opinion Survey

Each year, the Department of Education invites parents and carers to participate in the Parent/Caregiver/Guardian Opinion Survey. The survey provides valuable information about how families experience our school and helps us understand what we are doing well, as well as where there may be opportunities for further improvement.

Since arriving at SMPPS in 2024, we have introduced and embedded a number of new initiatives across teaching, learning and wellbeing. We are beginning to see encouraging trends across a range of measures, including NAPLAN and our Attitudes to School Survey data. An equally important part of understanding our progress is hearing directly from our parents and carers.

Unfortunately, last year we had too few responses to the Parent Opinion Survey for the results to provide us with sufficiently reliable data about how our broader community was experiencing the school. This year, I would really value your help in changing that.

May I ask you to please set aside approximately 20 minutes to complete the survey. Your opinions matter. Meaningful school improvement relies on listening to students, staff and families, and this survey is an important opportunity for our SMPPS community to have its say.

Thank you in advance for contributing.

Congratulations

A huge congratulations to Oliver Ellis, who has not only successfully completed a six-month Probationer program, but has also secured a position to formally train with the Australian Boys Choral Institute as a ‘Tyro’ Singer.

This is a wonderful achievement and recognition of Oliver’s commitment and hard work. Well done, Oliver!

Parent Teacher Conferences

Last Wednesday evening marked the culmination of our first Parent Teacher Conferences using our new teacher-and-parent-led format.

The response from families has been overwhelmingly positive. The conferences provided parents and carers with an opportunity to unpack Semester 1 reports with classroom teachers, celebrate student progress and, importantly, discuss the next steps that will support each child’s learning and wellbeing.

Strong partnerships between home and school make a genuine difference to student outcomes. I would like to thank our teachers for the considerable preparation and professional thinking that went into making the conferences meaningful and productive.

I also extend my thanks to our parents and carers for making the time to attend and for continuing to work in partnership with us. Open, respectful and purposeful communication between home and school remains an important part of how we support our students to thrive.

Arriving Late to School — Miss a Little, Miss a Lot

Did you know that on most days our teachers aim to have explicit teaching underway by approximately 9.05am?

That gives students and teachers just five minutes from our 9.00am start to complete attendance and transition into the first learning of the day. Depending on the year level, this may mean moving directly into our Phormes phonics program or our new Facts on Fire Maths Fluency Program.

This is one of the reasons we offer our Soft Start from 8.50–8.58am. Students can arrive, put their bags away, settle into the morning, participate in a quiet activity or spend a little time on the playground before heading into class ready for our 9.00am start.

Recently, we have noticed an increase in the number of students arriving after 9.00am and requiring late slips. While we completely understand that occasional lateness is unavoidable, regular late arrival can mean students miss important explicit instruction and the routines that set them up for successful learning. Entering after learning has commenced can also create an additional interruption for both the student arriving and the class already engaged in their lesson.

Miss a little, miss a lot. Five or ten minutes may not seem significant on any one morning, but accumulated across a term or a year, those minutes represent a considerable amount of learning time.

Wherever possible, we ask families to make use of our Soft Start and support students to be ready for learning by 9.00am. Thank you for helping us protect valuable learning time for every student.

Court Hire - Reminder to families

We have lots of activities on the outdoor courts each afternoon after school, inclulding Tennis, Baketball and Netball.  A reminder to parents and children if Tennis or Team Sports are on after school to please keep clear of the courts.   

Breakfast Club

We are still on the hunt for some community support to help continue our much-loved Breakfast Club.

As Helen Shaw prepares to hand over the reins, we are looking for assistance with two aspects of coordinating the program:

• Foodbank ordering — coordinating the ordering of food and supplies; and
• Volunteer coordination — helping to ensure our Breakfast Club shifts are covered.

Importantly, you do not need to take on both roles. If one of these sounds like something you could assist with, we would love to hear from you.

If you are interested, or would simply like some more information about what either role involves, please email the school and we would be very happy to talk you through it and support a smooth handover from Helen.

And another enormous shout-out to our wonderful Breakfast Club volunteers. Quite simply, without you there would be no Breakfast Club. Thank you for continuing to give your time to our students and our community.

Thank You, Michael!

A big thank you to Michael Grech, who has overseen the successful installation of our new projector in the gym.

We were able to put it to use at our most recent assembly and it worked wonderfully. This is another improvement to our shared facilities that will support assemblies, presentations, celebrations and learning opportunities for our students and community.

Thank you, Michael, for making it happen.

Sam Smrekar Thompson