From the Principal...

Hello everyone, I hope you and your children are happily enjoying the end of the school year. It has been a long term but also a very exciting one with so many opportunities to be shared and enjoyed.

Thank you to everyone for their attendance and support of our Christmas Concert last night. 

Our students did an amazing job in their performances and it was so great to see the many smiling faces having such a great time. It was also wonderful to see so many families here enjoying the social opportunities and building connections across the school.

Thank you to our specialist team Mrs Congiusta, Ms Croft, Mrs Taggart, Mrs McLaughlin, Mrs Humphreys and the whole staff team for supporting this event. Their work was pivotal to the rehearsals and functioning of the concert. Thanks also Mr Thresher for his MC work and to Mrs Hille for her great work with all things music, timing and microphones!!

I also thank Nick and the PTA team for their hard work on the BBQ and providing free icy poles across the school.

Heading into 2026

It was great to see the students enjoying the Up Day session during the week and also to hear that our Year 6 students enjoyed their Year 7 transition day. As we look ahead to next year our staff have been working in recent meetings and also throughout today, preparing for the year ahead. Today this work has been focussed on our curriculum planning across all subject areas as well as considering how we can develop the most purposeful environments to meet the learning and wellbeing needs of our students. 

In readiness for next year, I can share some slight changes to our programming. At MEPS we have a strong focus on explicit instruction that places priority on building sound foundational skills supporting all students to be literate, numerate and curious. Through a lens of wellbeing, we focus on building effective relationships with all students, parents and staff to ensure our collective efforts, attention and priority remains on students. Our strong belief is that if students are feeling supported, safe and confident in themselves and their relationships; students will be more inclined to experience academic success. In setting up for next year we have been focussed on ensuring that we have systematic processes and programs in place to support this work. Outlined below you will see the staff list with related responsibilities. 

We have planned (and staffed accordingly) for a systematic implementation of tiered supports for both learning and wellbeing. This will include opportunities to provide learning support, intervention and extension. We will also be able to provide proactive wellbeing support programs along with targeted individualised supports as appropriate. 

You will also see on the proposed 2026 school map that some of our classrooms and year levels have moved locations and we have strategically established some spaces around the school to support this important work in both wellbeing and learning. These spaces will be utilised to deliver academic focus groups and intervention supports along with structured social skills groups and positive mental health approaches.

After modifying our timetable across the past semester (based on the pre-established 50 minute instructional blocks) we have reviewed and refined this for next year. We will be moving to one hour blocks of instructional time in 2026. This supports the neuroscience around learning, our focussed explicit instructional model and provides increased time to enjoy our specialist programs across the school. We will confirm exact timings of each session prior to the start of the school year and assembly will remain on a Friday afternoon each week at 2.30pm. We will continue to provide brain breaks across the school to break up our 2 hours of instruction. The structure of our timetable in 2026 to allow for consistent learning with minimal disruption will be as follows:

Teaching session (1 & 2)

Break

Teaching session (3 & 4)

Break

Teaching session (5)

Resultantly from this change in our teaching sessions, our specialist provision will alter slightly in the scope and frequency.

Health and Physical Education – whole school all year

The Sciences - (physical and chemical sciences, technology, engineering and maths) - whole school all year

Languages P-4 – Indonesian all year

Languages 5/6 – Spanish, French, Italian, Indonesian (student choice)

Visual and Media Arts - whole school half year

Performing Arts - (Music, Dance, Drama) whole school half year

This will provide all students with 4 specialist subjects each week and a broad curriculum that will also link into further value-added opportunities in each curriculum area throughout the year. Next year we will also be continuing with many extracurricular opportunities for students across the year including but not limited to:

• Whole school wellbeing curriculum
• Year 3-6 Sport
• Whole school cyber safety program
• Maths Enrichment program
• Senior Endeavour Program
• Beach program
• Swimming
• Camps
• Incursions / excursions
• Performing Arts showcase
• Cultural Days
• Recognition and celebration of Indigenous cultures and learning 
• Robust sporting programs across the school
• Embedded languages program
• Science and STEM
• Strategic integration of technology in learning 

• Children’s University

   

We are still reviewing the provision of an instrumental music program that is sustainable and self-functioning at MEPS. We will share further information next year.

2026 Staffing

We continue to finalise our staffing profile and are looking to potentially further enhance our support programs based on funding confirmation from the Department.

I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank a number of staff whom are departing MEPS in 2026. Thank-you to our teachers; Michael Howse, Sarah Grollman and Elisa Roberts and ES staff Liana Pierre, Kim Murray and Leah Quince. We are grateful for their contributions to the MEPS students, staff and community and wish them well for their next opportunities. Classroom teachers, Jennifer Tippett and Donna Murray will be on leave throughout 2026. We warmly welcome back Bridget Trotter, ESC from family leave and welcome new teachers Lauren Thomas and Jacqui Wilkie to the MEPS team. Both Lauren and Jacqui come to MEPS with a wealth of knowledge and experience.

2025 School Reports will be published next week. I’m sure you will find these comprehensive and informative outlining your child’s progress across the year. Thanks to the staff team for their efforts in compiling these.

Please also be aware that for next week our 2025 classes will be locating themselves into their 2026 classrooms. Just to clarify we will send a map of this on Monday so you will know where your child’s class is located for the final week of school.

As we plan ahead for the 2026 school year I wanted to remind families of the start dates:

Monday January 26 – Australia Day Public Holiday

Tuesday January 27 – Curriculum Day

Wednesday January 28 – Curriculum Day

Thursday January 29 – Year 1- 6 commence (8.45 – 3.15pm)

Friday January 30 – Preps commence 9-1pm

School fees

A reminder of our 2026 Booklist provided by Campion. These orders and payments are due by December 30th and will ensure all students have an individualised book pack supplied at the start of the 2026 school year. We are so very appreciative of your support that allows MEPS to continue to provide a well-resourced and high performing school. The second part of our school costs for 2026 will be sent home for payment in term 1, 2026. This will support the resourcing of all teaching and learning programs for the whole school year. As always, any families requiring financial support are asked to contact me via the office.

Student booklists are now live and ready to be ordered through our school resource supplier Campion. These packs have been designed to support the teaching and learning program at each year level at our school. All orders that are placed by the ‘order-by’ date will be delivered for free to MEPS and be ready for your child waiting in their classroom on the first day of term in 2026. 

Please head to: https://order.campion.com.au/ 

Your school resource code: Q2D9

Your order-by date is Tuesday 30 December 2025  

For more information, please access the attached ‘How to Order' flyer personalised to MEPS’ 

The Campion Parent Hub includes How to Order video & How to Order PDFs in 11 languages https://campion.com.au/parents/how-to-order/  

Family help: 

FAQs: https://campion.com.au/support-help/support/ 

Email help@campion.com.au 

Tel 1300 433 982 

Feedback

Thank you to the parents who came together to provide some feedback to the school. This information was very helpful to gain further insights as we prepare for our 2026 school review.

Congratulations to all the students whom received an academic award at our recent assembly. Whilst we celebrate these achievements, we also recognise the growth and development of every student as they work hard to achieve their personal best.

Well done to the year 2 students whom this week shared their knowledge in a showcase of their past, present, future projects. It was so great to share in this learning and to see so many parents here celebrating this work.

Similarly, to our year 5/6 students whom did an amazing job with their Changemakers expo! Such a fantastic culmination of the hard work and planning that went into this event. The stalls themselves were sensational and money raised for a range of charities and non-for-profit organisations was exemplary.

Well done to all the staff who supported both events – such a great success and a true representation of the high quality learning programs and high capacity of our students along with the great connection across our community. Thank you to all the parents for supporting the children and the school. It is greatly appreciated.

OHSC

As you are aware we are excited to welcome TeamKids to the MEPS OHSC program for 2026. TeamKids will be commencing their program from the 12th January for the school holiday program. The Before and After School Care will commence at the start of the 2026 school year. In order to use this program next year, families are asked to register their family via the following link:

https://www.teamkids.com.au/venues/mount-eliza-primary-oshc/

If you would like to access the holiday program, please follow the prompts to secure your place.

I hope you enjoy your weekend.

Michael

Respect, Resilience, Responsibility, Connectedness and Challenge