Principal's News

Winter has certainly arrived today. What a bleak, cold Friday in Melbourne. I know many heaters were on early in our classrooms today and whilst our students did have a chance to be outside at recess and lunch there was certainly a cold wind impacting on all of us. Welcome to our Melbourne winter! There is plenty of rain and cold weather forecast next week but I certainly hope that families can enjoy the long weekend before we come back together on Tuesday. A summary of highlights and notes from around the school are detailed below.

Classroom Cuisine

The Friday addition of Classroom Cuisine has certainly hit the ground running with many families taking up the opportunity to order on an additional day. Thank you for supporting this change and for the positive feedback we have received. It is great to offer a little more flexibility for families to plan lunches over the course of a busy week. A reminder that

Classroom Cuisine will also offer a special fundraising day each term with $1 from every order coming back to the school. This term that day will be the 25th June.

Reports & Parent Teacher Interviews

Our Parent-Teacher interviews will be held on the 2nd and 3rd of July. These conferences will complement the midyear reports which will be published on via Sentral. The reports are a chance to celebrate achievement and focus on the next goals for each student. I would urge all parents to read the reports prior to these interviews with a particular focus on the areas for improvement.

Building Maintenance

The Victorian School Building Authority (VSBA) and Harnest Constructions have continued a Planned Maintenance scope of work on our school. This work falls outside of the school budget and is managed jointly by the VSBA and the principal. The majority of work will be undertaken over the school holiday period and you may begin to see some scaffolding and temporary fencing installed around our prep building over coming weeks. This work is prioritised by a independent condition assessment report which then produces a school maintenance plan with priority items addressed.

2026 Enrolments

A reminder to families that we are a month into the enrolment window and that if you have a sibling that will be attending CPS next year, you will need to complete an enrolment form and hand it in to the office prior to July 25th. I would encourage local families to submit their applications as soon as possible. This allows the school to begin planning for the year ahead. We are continuing to see strong interest from in zone enrolments and out of zone applications. To assist the school with planning for 2026, please try to complete this process by July 25th.

King’s Birthday Public Holiday

The King’s Birthday public holiday is on Monday June 9th. The school will be closed on this day.

2025 Government Schools Principal Conference

Miharu and I attended the Statewide Principal Forum on the 3-4th June for school leaders (principals, assistant principals) around Victoria. This is a professional learning forum with a focus on building capacity and showcasing school achievements. The focus was on “Excellence in Every Classroom”. The conference focused on strengthening the culture and practice of collaboration within school networks to support the implementation of key school improvement initiatives.

The keynotes and workshops aligned with the following priorities:

Teaching and learning (including implementation of the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model 2.0)
Wellbeing and engagement
Cultural inclusion
Network collaboration
Leadership
Engaging and working with the community.

We also heard from the Minister Ben Carroll, North Melbourne Football Club President Dr. Sonja Hood, The Deputy Secretary of Education Dr. David Howes and a variety of presenters across the various workshops. Of significant note was the work we are doing on the introduction of phonics and the new Victorian Teaching & Learning Model 2.0. At CPS we have already begun to plan and implement these initiatives and embedded many discussions and work into our professional learning communities and curriculum meetings. As always, our focus is to lead for impact whereby we understand the point of need of each and every student and aim to help them improve and maximise their learning outcomes during their time here. The conference allowed for schools to learn from one another and identify areas where we can improve the delivery of student learning and wellbeing.

Premiers Reading Challenge

Leading from the front are our youngest students who have found themselves sitting on top of our reading challenge ladder for this fortnight. What a fantastic effort by our Prep students. A big thank you to Miss Matthews who has helped lead our participation in this years challenge.

Our leaderboard looks as follows:

1st - Prep - 232 Books
2nd - Grade 3 - 187 books
3rd - Grade 1 - 171 books
4th - Grade 5 - 128 books
5th - Grade 6 - 111 books
6th - Grade 2 - 104 books
7th - Grade 4 - 53 books

Leadership Review Day:

Yesterday our school leaders worked over the course of the day to complete a midyear evaluation of our work, review our Annual Implementation Plan, monitor progress and set a direction as we embark on our school review over coming weeks. What I deeply admire, is the energy in the room over the course of the day. The collaborative efforts of all English and Japanese teaching leaders to listen, share and work together. We also had the pleasure of inviting our Year 5/6 student leaders into the discussion working with them to respond to two prompts:

What is working well at Caulfield Primary School
What could we do better (no swimming pools)

We really enjoyed the opportunity to work off their energy. To finish off with, we asked them to use one word to describe Caulfield PS currently, they came up with some wonderful, very wholesome responses including; "diverse, respectful, community, generous, fair, fun, responsible, together, comfortable, exciting, safe".

Working Bee

We are still looking to put together a team of helpers to get stuck into our working bee on the 28th June. If you are able to assist and/or have any trade experience that would be greatly appreciated. If you would like to offer your support by completing the form linked here that would be fantastic. We would really like to assemble a team to work on an element of this project, namely a stage and platform area (see image). We would love your help!

Open Day

Our final open day of the year is scheduled for the 14th June. We have had great pleasure in sharing our school to visitors and our student leaders do such a fantastic job working with prospective parents and families and supporting their children. It is always such a great celebration of our school and our students.

AtoSS

We are in the final week of our Student Attitudes to School Survey, having worked with all Year 4 students over the last week, we will finish off this work by spending some time with our Year 5/6 students over the next week. These results help inform us of our work in our school, engaging with the most important stakeholders in our school

School Council

Our final school council meeting of Term 2 will be held on Tuesday evening, I have really appreciated the input and collaboration from our school council members this term.

Victorian Education Excellence Awards

The school has had endorsement from our Senior Education Improvement Leader (SEIL) and School Council to enter into the Victorian Education Excellence Awards, we have submitted an entry to be considered under the Dr Lawrie Shears ‘Outstanding Global Teaching and Learning’ Award which I believe reflects the outstanding bilingual education that is offered at our school.

I cannot wait to do the week ahead with our school community. I am finishing up my school review work at Knox Gardens PS on Tuesday but will be back to our school from Tuesday afternoon onwards. Enjoy a fantastic long weekend and stay warm.

Many Thanks,

Edward Strain

Principal