Principal's Item 

Dear parents, carers and friends of EEPS,

I hope everyone is having a great week. At the end of last week, on Friday afternoon, I had a moment of reflection with some of our staff. We were just talking about the day and the breadth of opportunity in just one day at EEPS. Last Friday we had the normal teaching and learning program, our normal support program, Interschool Sport, ELOs included cooking, gardening and many more activities, tree planting for National Tree Day and concert practice. None of these ‘just happen’ and I am grateful of such a dedicated teaching staff and a culture of opportunity at Eltham East.

Tree Planting for National Tree Day

A big thankyou to Mrs Jackson for organising the wonderful tree planting last week for all the Year 3 and 4 classes. Thank you to Ann, Garry and the Year 6 Sustainability Leaders, for also helping out and for making the week a great success.

NAPLAN Results

Parents in Year 3 and 5 have received separate notification regarding collecting individual NAPLAN results. Whilst NAPLAN results are never a complete indication of a school’s efforts or culture, they are an important measure of progress. I am very pleased to report that the 2026 EEPS NAPLAN results are absolutely outstanding, with an incredibly high percentage of students in ‘strong and exceeding’ across many subject areas. Despite the challenges of the current education system, we have been very diligent in maintaining our focus on our school goals and the work we have been doing connected to the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model. Thank you to everyone for making this possible.

Building Routines

I have spoken before about the importance of building routines both at school and at home. Naomi Brabender, our Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader, has included a very useful article in the Newsletter this week around the routines. Please make an effort to read it.

Team Kids Survey

We have reached the first-year anniversary of our Vacation Care program with Team Kids as provider. It is appropriate to provide them some feedback. I would ask parents to please find five minutes to complete the survey, both if you use the service or not. This is especially important as the projected attendance numbers have been lower than what we hoped and we want to continue to make this a viable service for families. Here is the survey link.

Industrial Action

Thank you to all our wonderful EEPS parents who made adjustments last Thursday for the strike day. There are other ongoing industrial actions but hopefully they largely won’t impact on you as families. I am very hopeful that we can have an agreed industrial agreement shortly and the ongoing uncertainties can be put to rest.

National Outside School Hours Care Educators Day

Today, Wednesday 29th July, is National Outside School Hours Care Educators Day. I would like to take the opportunity to thank all our hard-working OSHC staff, our Coordinators, permanent staff and casual staff. The school is indebted to you for the quality care that you provide for the EEPS children. Parents, if you get a chance, please make an effort to thank our educators at some point over the never week.

Learning and Growing Together

I often talk about the importance of adults learning as well as students at EEPS. This term our whole-school professional learning has been around specific aspects of reading comprehension, following on from our previous learning around phonemic awareness. In addition to this Mrs Egan, Ms Owen, Mrs Borg and I have been participating in a series of professional learning workshops designed to help write a ‘playbook’ of our instructional practices. Thank you for all the effort that constantly goes into school improvement.

Soft Plastic Recycling

Whilst we actively encourage rubbish free lunches and try and minimise our plastic use as a school, we are introducing a soft plastic recycling collection point for students. A big thank you to Eevi in Year 6 who came up with the idea and has helped get it up and running. Initially this will just be for relevant soft plastic from school and not for a drop off point for families from home. This is a new initiative, and we will monitor how it goes. Please see Eevi’s poster further in the newsletter.

International Friendship Day

This Thursday, 30th July is International Friendship Day. In this world you can never have enough friends. We are planning on a couple of simple activities and gestures to observe friendship. This connects, yet again, to our desire to ensure that all EEPS students have a real understanding of the mantra, ‘kindness matters at our school’.

Have a great week of Learning and Growing Together.

Kind regards

Warren Lloyd

Principal