A message from the Principal

After a first week of semester 2 that saw us hit the ground running with Parent Teacher Interviews, our staff spent last Friday working hard during the scheduled curriculum day.

The focus of the day for our teachers was on understanding the upcoming changes that are taking place to both what and how students across Victoria will learn from the start of 2025.

The implementation of the new Victorian Curriculum 2.0 was a major focus for the day and staff spent time unpacking the specific changes to the new Maths curriculum. This follows a simplified structure and has revised the sequence in which content that is taught to students.

Teachers also engaged with emerging educational research, in particular the concepts that make up the 'Science of Learning' approach that is informing a lot of the current debate and direction of teaching and learning in Australia. This brings in core concepts of cognitive science and evidence about how children learn best to provide a clear model for explicit instruction. This instructional approach is to be mandated in all Department schools from the start of next year and it was great to explore the reasons and evidence behind this change.

On Monday of this week this positivity was impacted by the unwelcome news that urgent building works are required on our Art Room and Kitchen Dining Room which will mean both spaces are out of action until the works are complete.

Over the recent school holidays, routine and scheduled building repairs discovered an issue with moisture in the subfloor causing sections of the floor to rot and that areas of white mould were present underneath the floor.

This discovery led to the Education Department engaging experts to inspect, take samples and write a report on the extent of the issue.

On Monday morning we received the report and it recommended that the two spaces should not be occupied until actions have been implemented to further investigate, rectify and repair this issue.

You would have noticed that contractors have been on site this week to begin works. So far this has involved removing all contents from both spaces and cleaning all of these materials and resources as they are being taken out. Most of these are being stored in the two shipping containers placed onsite for the duration of the works.

Losing access to these spaces is not ideal and means that;

• Art lessons will now take place upstairs in the main building.
• Our Italian classes will now take place in classrooms.
• Year 3/4 Kitchen sessions will be placed on hold temporarily. The Kitchen Garden program will focus more on the garden for the time being and we will hope to introduce some aspects of cooking with our produce with the students in the near future.
• Our Team Kids program will operate out of the Performing Arts room.

At the moment the timeline and extent of the work required is unclear but we should find out more over the next week. 

We will keep families updated with what is happening and any further information that we receive.

Neil Scott

Principal