Caulfield Primary School Newsletter

Principal's News

Fete eve! What an exciting time for our school. Throughout this week, we have seen a high level of time, commitment and effort from our fete committee to prepare the school for this exciting event. I wanted to express my sincere thanks, the committee first came together in 2022 and have worked, volunteered and put in countless hours and time to prepare. It is a wonderful celebration for our school to have delivered a school production and a school fete in the last semester of this school year. I look forward to seeing you around the school tomorrow and celebrating the day with each of you.

Further news from around our school is detailed below, thank you for taking a moment to read over this and engage with the happenings in our school community. 

 

School Fete

 

There is so much available via our silent auction in the lead up to our fete tomorrow, you can navigate to our GalaBid Silent Auction Page to browse and place a bid on a great collection of items. These items will be available via our silent auction right across Saturday, there are many pampering options, school holiday ideas and exciting choices to entertain students and families. 

 

Working Bee

 

On a hot Friday afternoon, could I please extend a sincere thanks to our working bee attendees that helped complete some maintenance and cleaning throughout the school last Friday. This was our last working bee for the year. Thank you so much for the volunteer support offered throughout 2023 from our families and school community. 

 

Library Fund:

 

Thank you to families that contributed to our library fund as a voluntary contribution this year, we recently took delivery of some brand new shelving that has upgraded our storage and created easier access for our students to use and borrow from. This equipment upgrade was only made possible from these generous contributions.

 

World Teachers’ Day – Mathematics Teacher Award

 

World Teachers’ Day allowed me the exciting opportunity to celebrate the work of a mathematics teacher in our school, I was able to nominate Onda sensei for her leadership and dedication to improving the teaching and learning in our numeracy program at Caulfield Primary School. Onda sensei is a learning specialist at our school and leads improvement cycles aligned to our numeracy program. She was recognised and awarded with a Primary School Maths Teacher Award and a small gift that was presented to her by the CEO of Matific. Congratulations Onda sensei! 

 

SaGE and Bayside Principal Meetings

Morioka sensei and I have enjoyed a very busy week engaging in conferences on both Tuesday and Thursday with attendance at the Bayside Peninsula Principal Forum and the SaGE Principal Network. Tuesday provided us with the opportunity to hear statewide updates from the Department of Education Regional Director and Executive Directors in school improvement and early childhood. On Thursday, we continued our professional learning at a network level, working alongside Ryan Dunn. 

 

OHS Assurance Program

 

Last week, our school undertook our OHS Assurance Program, previously referred to as the OHS Audit, these are undertaken every four years by all schools and include a rigorous and extensive evaluation of Occupational Health and Safety measures in our workplace. We were very pleased with the overall outcome and the results were significant, over the coming weeks, a detailed report will be shared with the school that provides a great summary of achievements and aspects to review. The independent auditor was able to pass comment on how impressed he was with the overall compliance and application from all staff to OHS training and learning. This was evident last Monday when all staff undertook our First Aid Training. In addition to this, staff are asked to complete training in mandatory reporting, OHS inductions and safe work methods. I extend my sincere thanks to Caroline and Miharu for supporting this work throughout this year in preparing for this audit. 

 

AARE Conference

 

Throughout the last few years, I have had the pleasure of working alongside two academics from Monash and Deakin University and three fellow school principals in producing a research chapter and journal article. We were pleased to be accepted to present our work at the Australian Association for Educational Research 2023 Conference on the 28th November. Our presentation is detailed in ‘Leadership Learnings From Crises’ which details our response to school leadership throughout the pandemic and the machinations of how this unfolded during those years.   

 

Annual Implementation Plan

 

2024 will be the 3rd year of our School Strategic Plan (SSP) and this document drives our school improvement focus through our Annual Implementation Plan, over the course of 2023 we have worked to focus in on areas of improvement throughout the school and these were focussed pieces that we targeted at the beginning of the year, some of these highlights include: 

  • Targeted Literacy and Numeracy intervention groups for selected students
  • Completion of professional learning for middle leaders and school improvement team
  • Introduction of the Professional Learning Communities for staff with over 30 hours of learning and data collaboration completed together.
  • The introduction of PAT testing in our whole school assessment schedule.
  • Small group wellbeing groups delivered as specific wellbeing support from Prep – 6 
  • The introduction of Smiling Mind to target mindfulness as a wellbeing support 
  • Lunchtime clubs and activities delivered to support student engagement
  • Completion in the Leading Mathematics professional learning for maths leaders
  • Refined improvements in the use of Individual Education Plans 

We feel like we have achieved a lot at a whole school level and throughout our classrooms and as we plan forward for 2024 we are aware of areas that we want to address and refine whilst also celebrating that improvement journey and the work that we are engaging with on a daily basis. 

 

Virtual Tour 

 

On the ‘to do’ list for some time, was reviewing our school tours and providing a digital option for families, noting with border restrictions relaxed, we are seeing increased interest in our school from overseas. Over the last few weeks, we have had some 360 degree photography taking place and I am excited to share our virtual school tour available via the link below. We will embed this on our school website as a fresh way for prospective families to view the school. 

https://venue3d.com.au/caulfield-ps/

 

Smiling Mind

 

Throughout semester 2, we have partnered with Smiling Mind to deliver a mindfulness and curriculum support in each classroom. We are delighted to continue with this work in 2024, funded in part by the Mental Health funding and through the Federal Government grant application. Our work in this area was recently recognised by Smiling Mind with a research team working with our Year ½ team to explore how they have implemented smiling mind into our classrooms. This wellbeing approach is evidence based as is a tiered support implemented with consistency throughout the school. 

 

Open Classrooms

 

Thank you to our Prep – Year 2 families that attended our Term 4 Open Classrooms on Tuesday afternoon, I know first hand from our students, how excited they are with welcoming you into their learning space and showing you what they are doing in their classroom. A reminder, that we have our Year 3 - 6 Open Classrooms next Tuesday afternoon from 3:30 – 3:50pm. T

 

School Council

 

On Tuesday evening, we have our final school council meeting for the year, please let myself or the office know if you wish to attend as an observer at this meeting, whilst the school council tenure extends into the first meeting of 2024, I wanted to express my sincere thanks to all council members for their support and work throughout this year. As a group they have had oversight over the policy, finance, buildings and grounds and the school fete. On top of this, a sub-committee steered the school through an expression of interest process for the OSHC contract. My particular thanks to Chris S (Father of Emily – Year 6) who will conclude his role as treasurer on school council. I have greatly appreciated his support and his commitment to our school over many years, predating my time at the school. 

 

Camp Australia

I was able to drop into our Camp Australia program last Wednesday to be on hand to acknowledge the work of our Camp Australia coordinator, Jade. Jade received due recognition for her 20 years of service at Camp Australia, including the last three years as coordinator of our OSHC program. I know you will join with me in recognising her commitment to our students over this time. Thank you Jade! 

 

Workforce Planning

 

There is still widespread (and valid) media reporting around the impact of teacher shortages on our profession, recently The Age detailed this whilst acknowledging that teachers are taking up casual placements as opposed to having interest in fulltime positions, this is currently impacting on many schools in and around us and the recruitment pages for teaching positions are currently advertising over 1200 positions in Victoria. To that end, I am very pleased to have finalised our workforce planning for 2024 which will be released to families in coming weeks, we have a really experienced and passionate team of educators that will frame our work next year and it is pleasing to have this settled despite the overbearing uncertainly impacting on our profession at the moment. 

 

Japan Trip 2024

Kurokawa sensei had worked really hard to secure an initial quote for a 2024 Japan Trip, over coming weeks we will engage with our senior school and inform families of this whilst detailing initial costs. We have not had a chance to complete a Japan Trip since 2019 and it is a great culmination and celebration of our bilingual learning for our Year 6 students and we are excited about exploring this again with our school community. 

 

Kiss and Go Parking

Please be reminded that the car parking on Olive Street, directly out the front of the school is for a quick kiss and go drop off in the morning. We are becoming aware of traffic issues that are impacting on traffic flow on Olive Street and turning left and right into this street from Poplar Street, please ensure cars are not parked for a long term period in this 'Kiss and Go' area as it does impact on others in the morning. 

 

Happy Diwali:

I extend my warm wishes to members of our school community that celebrated Diwali on Sunday. I hope the beginnings of the new year provides the opportunity for families to be together and celebrate this event with loved ones. 

 

 

 

As always there is so much happening in and around the school, tomorrow you will find me serving some Japanese food in the morning, on our ticketing booth and getting wet in our Dunk Tank in the afternoon, I look forward to this celebratory occasion (hopefully not getting wet) and joining with our school community in our school fete, I look forward to seeing you there. 

 

My Thanks, 

Edward Strain

Principal