Principal's News
Mrs Nicole Black
Week 7, Term 1
School Closure Day – Staff Professional Learning
On Friday 6th March, while students enjoyed a day off, the staff at St Mary’s were busy taking part in an important day of professional learning.
All staff completed their Level 2 First Aid training, which is an essential qualification for those working in schools. This training ensures that our staff are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to respond appropriately to a range of medical situations that may arise in a school environment.
Maintaining current First Aid qualifications is a key part of our commitment to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of every student, staff member and visitor at St Mary’s. While we hope we never need to use these skills, it is important that our staff are prepared and confident to act quickly and effectively if needed.
Thank you to our staff for their dedication to continuing to learn and ensuring that St Mary’s remains a safe and supportive environment for all.
Positive Behaviour for Learning at St Mary’s
This year, St Mary’s has begun an exciting journey as we start implementing Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) across our school. PBL is an evidence-based approach that supports schools to create safe, respectful and supportive learning environments where every student can thrive.
A key part of PBL is developing shared expectations for behaviour that are clearly understood by everyone in the school community. To begin this process, both students and staff had the opportunity to vote on the values they believe are most important for our school.
After a fantastic response and thoughtful consideration, the three values chosen by our community are:
At St Mary's, we are:
⭐ Respectful
⭐ Safe
⭐ Responsible
These values will form the foundation of our behaviour expectations at St Mary’s. Over the coming weeks, students will work with their teachers to explore what these values look like in different areas of the school; in classrooms, on the playground, during learning time, and when representing our school in the community.
Through PBL, we will explicitly teach and model positive behaviours, just as we do with academic learning. Students will be recognised and celebrated when they demonstrate our values, helping to build a strong and positive school culture where everyone feels they belong.
This work aligns closely with our 2026 theme “Everyone Matters.” By being Respectful, Safe and Responsible, we help ensure that every member of our community feels valued, supported and able to do their best.
We look forward to sharing more about our PBL journey as the year continues. 😊
News from Parents and Friends!
St Mary’s Easter Raffle
This year we are excited to have a St Mary’s Easter Raffle! We are looking forward to creating some wonderful Easter hampers that families will have the chance to win.
To help make this possible, we are asking each student to bring along a small Easter-themed donation. This might include items such as Easter eggs, chocolates, lollies, small Easter gifts or other Easter treats. All donations will be combined to create a range of fantastic hampers for our raffle.
We will not be selling tickets, they can be earned! Every child who brings in a raffle donation will receive one free raffle ticket. Students will also have the opportunity to earn additional raffle tickets by demonstrating our new Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) values- being Respectful, Safe and Responsible.
We hope this will be a fun way to celebrate the Easter season while also recognising the positive behaviours we encourage every day at St Mary’s.
Donations are due by Friday 20th March and can be brought to your child’s classroom or the front office.
Thank you for your support in helping make our St Mary’s Easter Raffle a wonderful success! 🐣🍫
Parent Teacher Interviews
We have scheduled parent teacher interviews for Monday 16th March, beginning at 2PM. On this day we ask parents to collect students early, at 1:30pm, to allow for the interviews to take place.
We have very limited availability to look after students between 1:30pm and 3:15pm and ask that only those who have no alternative options to sign up for additional supervision
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Please book a time to meet with your child/ren's classroom teacher. These interviews are a chance to have a conversation about your child's early progress as well as how they have settled into school. Children are welcome to attend with parents but not required to. The link to book is below. If you are unable to make it on this day, please liaise with the classroom teachers to organise an alternative day and time.
If your child has already had a PSG meeting with the teacher, there is no need to book a Parent Teacher Interview as well.