Buninyong PS Newsletter

Principal's Report

PREPARING FOR 2025

Term 4 is the busiest period of the year in schools, as we attend to tasks associated with finishing off the year well, whilst planning for the following year.  Tasks associated with finishing off the year well includes:

  • assessing student progress
  • writing end of year reports, and following up with parent teacher interviews
  •  running transition programs
  • holding a grade 6 graduation ceremony
  • publishing the school magazine, etc

Preparing well for the year to come includes:

  • recruitment of staff and making sure new staff are supported to successfully transition into our school
  • developing budgets
  • creating new class groupings
  • sorting book lists
  • developing an Annual Implementation Plan
  • allocating staff roles
  • school captain & scholarship program selections
  • facilitating planning days for teams of staff that will be working together in 2025
  • developing timetables and
  • preparing for a handover of students from their 2024 teacher to their 2025 teacher

For a large multi-campus school, staying on track with all the above at this time of year can be a challenge, but at this stage we’re on track. 

Budgeting

Later in the week our Finance Committee will come together to further work on developing a budget to present to the School Council next Monday.  This is always a challenge, as we struggle to make ends meet, but hopefully this will all be sorted and approved on Monday night.  As always, we’ll be endeavouring to develop budgets that maximise the use of available resources to achieve the best possible outcomes for our students.

Annual Implementation Plan (AIP)

At this time of year all schools are expected to reflect on progress with respect to their Annual Implementation Plan (AIP) and to start developing an AIP for the following year.  We’ve been chipping away at these tasks and will have a draft to present at School Council next week.  This plan identifies priorities for the coming year and includes both teaching & learning priorities and those relating to student wellbeing.

 

School Captain Selections – Over the past couple of weeks grade 5 students have been writing letters to express their interest in school captain and other leadership roles for 2025.  They have done a fabulous job, and the letters are both persuasive and make for an entertaining read.

 

In the coming weeks, interviews will be conducted for prospective School Captains for 2025.   The school captain selection process is very thorough, with decisions based on student letters, the interviews and feedback from class and specialist teachers.  Our aim is to have decisions made and communicated by the end of week nine.

 

Class Groupings - Last Monday the focus at our staff meeting was to begin the task of developing class groupings for next year.  This work will continue over the coming few weeks. 

 

Thanks to parents for being very reasonable with placement requests, as this certainly increases the chances of us developing groupings that work for everyone (staff and students).  As always, we aim to have a nice balance of gender, personalities and achievement levels in each class and do our best to make sure every student has a close friend or two. 

 

Students will get to meet their teacher and classmates for 2025 on Friday December 13.

ENERGY BREAKTHROUGH (EBT)

Good luck to our EBT Team, with the 2024 event scheduled for later this week.  Bryan White, Jayke Arnold and Jarrod Rodgers have done an excellent job preparing the students, which has included before and after school practice sessions.  The students are very excited and ready to go. 

 

This event couldn’t happen without the support of parents and we’re grateful to have quite a few parents helping out in a range of ways. 

 

This is an amazing experience for the students and something they won’t forget- well done to the team for making this possible and we wish them the best of luck. 

 

We look forward to reporting on our exploits at EBT in next week’s newsletter.  Even better, tune into the school’s official Facebook page to view updates throughout Thursday and Friday.

Scholarship Program Applications

A reminder that 2025 Scholarship Program Applications close next Friday, November 29th. These applications are open to all students who will be in years 4, 5 and 6 in 2025.

As previously mentioned, programs on offer are Art, Master Chef, Music, Photography and STEM Extension.

 

Please see Compass for more information or contact the office if you have any questions.