Principal's News

We have enjoyed such a busy and engaging fortnight around the school and Friday brings the first week of our swimming program to an end with the program continuing into next week. There is so much happening around the school and so many highlights and acknowledgements to share, I never feel like I do that justice or that we are able to detail every single moment but we can certainly try. Thanks for taking a minute to share in our highlights and upcoming events from around the school. 

Open Day

We host our first Open Day of the school year tomorrow and if nothing else, encourage our families to come down and support our sausage sizzle and cake stall that is coordinated by our Parent and Friends Club (PFC). We have school tours running at 9:30am and 11:00am and our Prep classrooms will be open for prospective families. We would love to see your support in any capacity. We currently have high levels of interest in our school tours delivered during the week and our school is growing with 9 new students beginning with us since the start of Term 2. 

Swimming Program

We have enjoyed a great first week at swimming, thank you for supporting our teachers and students with this, a big thank you to those families that were able to volunteer to support us at GESAC. Due to the changes in routine and the additional physical activity (swimming) we have noticed that students are becoming tired in the afternoon, you may have also noticed this at home. It is a big commitment for our students, in particular those in Prep – Year 2. You might be able to further assist your child by ensuring that they are getting an early bedtime routine and that they have plenty of food and snacks to sustain them throughout the day. 

Annual Report

On Tuesday evening we opened up the discussion at School Council to share our Annual Report data with our council members and our school community. Once the independent quality assurance piece is completed, this report will be uploaded for viewing on our school website. In the interim, I can share with you our success stories for the 2023 school year. The school was able to achieve improvements in targets aligned to Teacher Judgement data. This resulted in the percentage of students from Foundation to Year 6 achieving at or above expected level for English at 96.2%. The percentage of students in Foundation to Year 6 achieving above expected level in Mathematics was 94.9%.   The school was able to correlate these teacher judgement outcomes against NAPLAN achievement outcomes in Year 3 and 5. Recording outcomes in Year 3 and 5 Reading and Numeracy well above the state averages in the stand-alone year (2023).

Highlights and graphics below details some really noteworthy celebrations for our school, our staff and our teaching and learning programs.

Highlights include

Percentage of students in the Strong or Exceeding proficiency levels in NAPLAN.

• Naplan Year 3 Reading: 88.6% – 19% above state average, 5.6% above similar school average
• Naplan Year 5 Reading: 91.4% – 14.5% above state average, 2.3% above similar school average
• Naplan Year 3 Numeracy: 88.9% – 21.5% above state average, 6% above similar school average
• Naplan Year 5 Numeracy: 94.3% – 26.4% above state average, 11.7% above similar school average

School Review

Throughout Monday and Tuesday of this week, I have participated in a school review at Malvern Central Primary School in the role of a challenge partner, the role of a challenge partner is idealised around the provision of support as principal from another school providing an impartial lens toward the school improvement work of the school. It was fascinating to see the work undertaken at Malvern Central, they are doing some great things and it was really nice to balance out their work against the really great stuff happening at our school. I left with some great ideas and also full of admiration for another local school leading some great work. 

Languages Unit Visit CPS

Members of the Department of Education Languages Unit, including director Louise Stewart visited our school on Friday morning looking to explore our immersion program and celebrate our achievements. It was a great opportunity to Onda sensei, Morioka sensei, Morita sensei and I to present and share our approach to bilingual education at Caulfield PS. Our visitors were really engaged with what we are doing at our school as we have an opportunity to present some of our strategic planning and visit our Prep and Year ¾ classrooms.

Mother's Day Stall

Our wonderful PFC are once again running the Mother's Day Stall so our students will have the opportunity to purchase their own gift for mum. It’s very important that children are empowered to make their choice of a gift. They feel very proud of their choice of gift and enjoy the thought of being able to give this to mum on that special moment. On behalf of everyone at our school I want to say sincere thanks to the PFF and the many helpers who will come along on the day to help with the stall. We look forward to seeing a many happy faces at our stall on Thursday. 

Department of Health Alert

A health alert has been issued by the Victorian Department of Health about the danger of consuming potentially poisonous mushrooms, particularly death cap mushrooms and yellow staining mushrooms. These mushrooms commonly grow in both metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria. You can view images of the 2 poisonous mushrooms on the Better Health Channel's Mushroom poisoning webpage.

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/fungi-poisoning

The toxin in death cap mushrooms remains even after cooking, peeling or drying. If ingested, poisoning can cause nausea, stomach cramps and/or long-term liver damage resulting in death. Yellow staining mushrooms look like field mushrooms commonly found in supermarkets but can be harmful if consumed. Symptoms experienced after consumption include nausea, stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea. Please remind your children, as will we at school, to not pick or eat wild mushrooms. Please let them know about the dangers of these mushrooms and reinforce to them not to touch any mushrooms they find. 

Inspire Program

On Wednesday I was asked to work with three other Bayside Peninsula principals to present and facilitate the Inspire program for emerging leaders, system capacity benefits all schools in our local area and we are so fortunate to work with such quality teaching staff at Caulfield PS and in other local schools. The Inspire program aims to prepare teaching staff for leadership roles in their own school. It is a workshop model delivered in sessions throughout the remainder of the year. We are hopeful that the positive impact can support our school and other local schools as we aim to build the capacity of our teachers. 

It is a lovely afternoon outside and a perfect evening for Friday night footy, I hope to be celebrating a victory against the Magpies tonight. More importantly, I hope our families enjoy a lovely weekend and I hope to see many of you enjoying our sausage sizzle and cake stall on Saturday. 

Have a great weekend. 

My Thanks, 

Edward Strain

Principal