Principal's News

We have enjoyed a really busy fortnight around the school and this is intwined with some very cold weather as we move into the depths of winter. Unfortunately we have seen some rain throughout this week that has meant we have had to run a wet day timetable and keep students in at recess and lunchtime. I am really aware of how much physical activity is vital for our students and wherever possible we will get our students outside for a play at recess and lunch. Unfortunately, with some of the recent weather patterns this hasn’t always occurred with yesterday (Thursday) a great example of that. 

As we gear up for the final two weeks of Term 2, I really appreciate you taking a minute to engage in some of the highlights from around the school. 

Reports

A reminder that our Semester 1 reports will be distributed to families on Monday 24th June, these are shared digitally via Sentral and will provide you with the opportunity to support our upcoming Parent Teacher Interviews on the 26th and 27th June. In addition to this, I am running a Parent Information session next Thursday afternoon in The Common Room, this will be addressing key aspects to our academic reports and be able to answer any questions. Please feel free to come along to The Common Room next Thursday afternoon from 3:40pm. 

Recruitment

Following a recruitment process to build our Education Support team, I welcome Asako White to our school, Asako has worked in the school over previous months alongside the Year 5/6 team and will continue in that position. Asako is a great addition to our team. Welcome Asako! 

Attitudes to School Survey

Today is the final day of the 2024 Attitudes to School Survey, this survey is completed annually by students in all Victorian Government schools from years 4-12 and provides a great piece of voice and agency for our students to identify how they feel our school is supporting them. Our School Improvement (Leadership) Team have really enjoyed working alongside our Year 4-6 students over recent weeks. We look forward to sharing the results with our school community over coming months. 

Welcome Home

Our Year 5/6s returned back to school yesterday afternoon following a very successful three-day camp at Lake Dewar. Fortunately, they did not experience the kind of weather that we had in Melbourne and remained very dry over the length of their stay.  My sincere thanks to our staff, including Mrs Newman, Miss McCann, Onda sensei, Morioka sensei, Miss Molloy and Caroline who supported our students so astutely over the course of the three days. There were plenty of stories to share and highlights from the three days and I have no doubt that we will have some positively exhausted Year 5/6 students this Friday afternoon.

Prep Cultural Day

Our Prep students enjoyed a fantastic cultural day on Tuesday, celebrating cultural diversity in our school, with such celebrated cultural diversity in our school and in surrounding suburbs, it makes a day such as this, a great celebration for our students and an opportunity to share and learn from others. I am always so proud of how respectful and supportive our prep students are, they are curious and always open to learning about others. Well Done Preps! Thank you to our teaching staff and volunteers who assisted on the day.

Coffee Van

A reminder that we have a coffee van in attendance on the 21st June, come and join us for a quick coffee to begin the day, whether that be a time for a chat with other families or an opportunity to catch up informally with some of our staff. Please come and join us from 7:45am onwards on the 21st June. 

Open Day

Our next Open Day is upon us with school tours running at 9:30am and 11:00am. We are continuing to see strong interest in our school with a steady stream of 2025 enrolments. Our Open Day will once again be supported by our PFC and this provides a great opportunity to support our school. Within your local network, could you please encourage prospective families to attend our Open Day and/or support our sausage sizzle and cake stall on the day. 

End Of Term Review

We were joined last Thursday by our Senior Education Improvement Leader and Education Improvement Leader as an opportunity to review our progress in semester 1 aligned to our Annual Implementation Plan, we addressed our Key Improvement Strategies and associated actions and outcomes that we were striving for in our work this year. It was a really great opportunity to celebrate our success so far this year whilst also launch into some discussion around what the focus might be for the remainder of the year. 

School Review

Exciting news! We were recently informed that the school will undertake a review process in Term 2, 2025. This reviews progress against our current School Strategic Plan (SSP) and establishes a platform for the school to build a new strategic plan for the 4 years ahead. The school last undertook this process in 2021. It will be a really great process to undertake together alongside our students and school community. 

School Council

Our School Council met last Tuesday evening and framed conversations around the following sub-committee input: 

• Education and Policy: Policies tabled and endorsed at the meeting included:
• Child Safety Policy 
• Bullying Prevention Policy
• Child Safety Responding and Reporting Obligations Policy
• Complaints Policy 
• Bilingual Enrolment Policy.
• Finance: End of Financial Year update and an appeal for support and donations to Library and Building Fund.
• Buildings and Grounds: Working Bee setup for Saturday 17th August, carpets and painting quotes to be sought, students toilets to be inspected.
• School Engagement: Discussion around a PFC Music Festival (15th September), Traffic Concerns - local streets, and Undokai festival.

I greatly appreciate the work of our school council throughout this semester, we are scheduled to next meet on the 30th July – Term 3. 

End of Term

The last day of Term 2 is Friday 28th June, and we are finishing school at 2.30pm on this day. An end of Term assembly will be held to conclude the final day. 

2025 Foundation Enrolments

Please remember to get applications in for younger brothers or sisters starting school in 2025. Changes to the process in 2024 mean all enrolments should be done by Wednesday Friday 26th July at the very latest.  Our school tours are really popular at the moment sitting alongside ‘Word of Mouth’ as the best form of promotion so please pass on our school details to friends and neighbours. 

Synthetic Phonics Mandated Across Victoria

The Minister for Education, Ben Carroll, has announced this week that all schools will be mandated to undertake the teaching of synthetic phonics in Foundation to Grade 2. This direction has been initiated due to the evidence clearly showing that this approach is highly effective in the teaching of reading and spelling. It is a really exciting step forward with a minimum of 25mins of daily, explicit teaching of phonics and phonemic awareness mandated in all schools. 

It ties in really nicely with our current work in our school, supporting improvements in our literacy program through professional engagement in the Leading Literacy program delivered by the Academy of Teaching and Leadership. It also reinforces our approach at CPS to intervention through the use of Minilit and Macqlit as Tiered 2 and 3 interventions. It also leans heavily on the work I lead with teachers in our system looking at supporting the shift from learning to read to reading to learn. 

On Tuesday afternoon, I had the opportunity to once again present and work with teachers from around the South-East Region to support improvements in literacy, intervention and catering for students with dyslexia in their own schools. The announcement from the Minister is a really exciting step forward for all students.  

Monday Assembly

We have a special assembly on Monday morning with two performances from our CPS Dance Club and our School Choir. Unfortunately I will be an apology but I would really encourage you to come and see these special performances from our talented students. 

Have a great weekend and I look forward to seeing some of you at our PFC cake stall and BBQ on Saturday.  

My Thanks, 

Edward Strain

Principal