Message from the Principal 

Our Year 5 & 6 students held their first Earn & Learn Market Day last week. This program is certainly a real highlight and offers so much real-life learning. There are elements of financial literacy, mathematics, English, Critical & Creative Thinking and of course Personal and Interpersonal Capabilities. 

Making meaningful and purposeful connections is critical in the learning process and Earn & Learn is a really effective example of this in action. 

JSC MINI FAIR

The concept of Earn & Learn is taken further across the school with our very own JSC Mini Fair on Friday this week. This was an idea from our Junior School Council that stemmed from discussions about the fact that we haven’t been able to have a Spring Fair since 2018 because of Covid and our buildings works. This event aims to provide a small taste and experience of the great fairs that we have run over the years. 

We have altered the normal timetable to run lunchtime slightly earlier so that the Mini Fair can run between 1.30pm and 3pm. All family members are invited to come along and share in the fun. Years 1-4 classes will be running their own stalls and of course our Year 5 & 6 students will be running their Earn & Learn business groups again. This time with real money!

During the Mini Fair students will be able to purchase food, drinks, novelty items, play games, competitions and much more. We ask that students please bring their cash in a plastic sealed bag with their name on it (no more than $25). Items to win/purchase range from 50c to $5.  To help with giving change we ask that students bring small notes and coins instead of large notes.  

All the money raised will go towards the purchase of interactive or large TV screens in classrooms to replace some of our older and often malfunctioning projectors.

FAMILY EDUCATION EVENING

Thank you to our teachers, students, and parents for a GREAT Family Education event last night. We had lots of positive feedback, and it was a terrific opportunity for our students to step into 2024. It was also a wonderful opportunity for parents and carers to be involved with school life at Greenhills. 

Our focus on a positive transition is important and something we continue to build on each year. A positive transition is enabled through providing opportunities for students to experience the environment, learning spaces, expectations, and routines of the next year of their schooling in a step by step and strategic way. We know that levels of anxiety amongst students right across the world are increasing and our aim is to help our students through the demands of being in a new space by taking away some of the unknowns that add that extra layer of stress. 

CLASS STRUCTURE 2024

Another element of our positive transition program is the time and effort that is put into student class placement. This has involved parents making requests for us to consider, students providing a list of friends or students they would like to learn with in a class and for our staff having input and feedback around the academic, social and emotional needs of our students. 

We have now finalised our class groups for next year. We have done all we can with the budget we have available to build a class structure that best suits the educational needs of our students. This structure is based on our teaching and learning model which is driven by our Professional Learning Community (PLC) team approach. Our small teaching teams have enabled a high level of collaboration, more time together for planning and review of teaching / teacher impact and a more agile and targeted curriculum delivery.

I take this opportunity to reinforce the message that even though we have a “straight” year level structure across the whole school, we still consider all our classes to be composite classes. In each of our classes we have over four different levels of academic learning and many levels of social and emotional needs. Our staff work very effectively in teams to target our teaching to the skills and knowledge that is required by each student. The way we build any of our classes is not different from each other. All classes are built to ensure a balance of academic, social and behavioural needs. 

21 Classes

*Specialist Notes – teachers require 5 x sessions of non-face to face teaching time to comply with the Victorian Government Schools Agreement. 

The VGSA 2022 requires that class sizes are planned on the smallest possible within the following guidelines: 

1. Prep - Grade 2: an average of 21 students per class.
2. Grades 3-6: an average of 26 students per class provided that the average class size of 21 at P-2 is maintained.

Greenhills Primary School will have three classes at Year 2 with 22 or 23 students, three classes at Year 3 with 28 students, three classes at Year 5 with 27 or 28 students and two classes at Year 6 with 28 or 29 students. 

Greenhills 2024 Class Size Average = 23.04

Greenhills 2024 Class Size Average P-2 = 19.4 & 3-6= 26.2

**Please note that this may change into and throughout next year.

We will also operate with 5 specialist subjects for the full school year. These are Italian, Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Physical Education and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Maths). 

The full list of staff for next year and their roles along with a map of where each classroom will be located will be published to the whole school community in a special edition of Contact on Thursday 7th December. This is the same day as our first Meet the Teacher session.

PLANNING FOR 2024

Our Executive Leadership Team is embedded in school organisation and work force planning for 2024. This includes staffing requirements, positions, and class structures etc. We recently completed a recruitment process and have some more recruiting to do over the next few weeks. 

In 2024, we will be continuing with our existing Executive leadership model and structure. This includes Principal, 2 x Assistant Principals, 2 x Learning Specialists and 1 x Business Manager. The continuation of our dual assistant principal model is made possible next year and beyond through the funding that is part of the Tier 2 Inclusion Model.

Other funds associated with Tier 2 Inclusion and Mental Health will be used to release a teacher for one day per week to support our staff to implement initiatives that are part of DET’s requirements. Additional Education Support Class time has also been allocated for the added layers of administration that schools must comply with.

Tutor Learning Initiative (TLI) funding which has been reduced for next year, along with our small equity funding will be used to support Sharon Draper’s Literacy Support Role.

All Principal Class roles will have a small tutor learning component and a small teaching load as well. This equates to 2 days of staffing which will help to reduce the large deficit we are managing. 

Our Learning Specialists will continue to be classroom teaching roles 0.8 (4 days a week) and 0.2 (1 day a week) time allowed for curriculum leadership, coaching, mentoring and working with all teams across the school to deliver our improvement strategies. 

Our school will continue as a Professional Learning Communities Link School for 2024. This means that we will work with DET to assist and support other schools to implement and grow this initiative across the broader system. DET will provide our school with $75,000 to cover the costs of staff release to enable this work which will also bring rich experience and benefits for our own school community.

Each teaching team (PLT) will also have 1 x Curriculum leader who will join as a School Improvement Team and 1 x Wellbeing & Inclusion leader who will join as a Wellbeing & Inclusion Team. Both teams will work the Exec. leadership team to drive and implement our 2024 Annual Improvement Plan.

TERM 4 MEET WITH THE PRINCIPAL TEAM FORUM

Thank-you to all those families that were able to attend last week’s Meet with the Principal Team Forum. Janine, Brad and I really value these sessions as they provide a wonderful opportunity to connect with you and do what we can to support and grow our partnership. Sharing information is a big part of this, so you truly are an integral part of our school. 

Our favourite part of these evenings are the ideas, feedback and suggestions you provide. Parent input is incredibly important to us and as such based-on ideas and questions from the session last week we can confirm that we will have a raised stage out on the Tigerturf for our Christmas Concert on Thursday 7th December. 

We also had a question around our NAPLAN Spelling results for 2023. Overall we are very pleased with these results and they indicate that what we are doing in spelling across the school is working – but yes there is always room for improvement! 

Our Year 3 data highlights that we have 72% of our students in the exceeding or strong band. This is significantly higher than the State percentage and 3% higher than the similar schools (in terms of socio-economic and family education / occupation measures) we are compared against. 

Our Year 5 data is also very solid with 77% of our students in the exceeding or strong band level. This is still well above State measure but equal with our similar school measures. 

NAPLAN YEAR 3 SPELLING DATA 2023

NAPLAN YEAR 5 SPELLING DATA 2023

If you ever have any questions, suggestions or feedback please contact a member of the Principal Team who will make a time to meet with you. The forums are a terrific way to do this, but you do not need to wait until the next meeting in Term 1, 2024 to have a voice and input into our school. 

James Penson

Principal