Principal's News

We have hit September and into spring and we have enjoyed some beautiful sunshine this week. We have enjoyed such a terrific fortnight around the school with a lot happening in our classrooms and the broader school community.

As we work our towards the final few weeks of Term 3, I really appreciate you taking a moment to review what is happening around our school. 

School Production

What a special afternoon and evening we enjoyed last Tuesday. Thank you to our families and school community for supporting our school production – Pirates of The Curry Bean. What wasn’t seen behind the curtain was the immense excitement (and nerves) that our students had on the day and how much they enjoyed performing for you and showcasing their performances for an audience. 

My sincere thanks to our staff who worked tirelessly in the lead up to the event and on the day and evening, supervising students back stage and managing excitement and the rollercoaster of emotions was a supreme effort. Congratulations to Okano sensei for pulling everything together on the night, putting on a wonderful event for our school. My immense thanks to our parents and volunteers who helped bring the show to life, including our costume team lead by Cathy and Maya who put in so much work. 

The Safe Migration Project 

The Traffic Accident Commission (TAC) have launched a Safe Migration Project. This initiative is aimed at helping parents and carers establish safe travel habits with their children from the very beginning of primary school.  Although this is directed to families as they commence primary school, we believe it is a great resource for all of our families. 

Please see the links below to a short video and fact sheet about travelling to and from school safely. They are both excellent resources. 

• Video - The Safe Migration Project - Starting Primary School
• Fact Sheet - Starting-primary-school-fact-sheet.pdf

We really encourage all parents to access this information.  Unfortunately, we regularly see many instances of unsafe driving and parking, we are surrounded by busy streets.  As we always say, it is all our responsibility to keep our students safe. 

ThinkUKnow 

Our Year ¾ and 5/6 students had the opportunity on Friday to work with members of the Victoria Police – Youth Policing Unit and engage in their ThinkUKnow presentation. This provided students an age-appropriate information session designed to upskill our students to maintain a safe digital presence when online. They were able to ask and respond to questions and were able to identify strategies to ensure they are alert and informed online.

Camp

Thank you to our teaching and education support staff who gave up two nights with their own family to support our Year ¾ students at Camp. Our students had a wonderful three days and were able to engage in a fantastic set of activities both during the day and at night. 

School Review

The school is in the next stage of our school review process, sharing this information back to staff and families, engaging our school community and beginning to work through the next steps in order to form our strategic direction for the coming years. Thank you to those families that joined me on Wednesday afternoon, an additional session will be held next Tuesday morning. The school review report is detailed and provides some great highlights of practice whilst detailing some steps that the school can take moving forward. 

Living in a Multilingual Home

A recent ABC News article was written highlighting the benefits of living in a multilingual home, it is an interesting article and well worth reading. It is linked here. 

Father’s Day

Thank you to our PFC for hosting a wonderful Father’s Day stall for our students, raising money for our school but also importantly ensuring that all Father’s and special persons are able to celebrate Sunday with their children. A very happy Father’s Day to all our CPS Dads and special people. Thank you for the support you provide our students and our school, I hope you are looked after on Sunday. 

School Council

Our next school council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday evening, with sub-committee meetings held over the last two weeks. Our meeting is the final meeting for Term 3 with a view to discussing our school review report, attitudes to school data, and sub-committee reports including finance, buildings and grounds, education and policy and school engagement. 

RU OK Day

RU OK Day is a national day of action where Australians are reminded that everyday is the day to ask, ‘are you OK?’ and start a meaningful conversation, whenever they spot the signs that someone they care about might be struggling. Next Thursday, we would like students to wear a touch of yellow to show their support. This could be in the form of ribbon, hair accessory, socks, badge, T-shirt etc. Students will be undertaking activities to develop their ability to have conversations with their peers, and what to do next if someone says they are not OK.

2026 Parent Requests

A Schoolstream notification will be shared next week with details around 2026 parent and family requests for classroom placements. The final date for submission of these requests will be October 17th. Please note the details provided in the Schoolstream message to support this process.

Yoga Classes

A reminder we have two more Yoga sessions coming up this term. 

7.45 - 8.30am Friday 12th and 19th September. 

These are drop-in classes (no booking required) and free! On the 19th there will also be a coffee van, for you to grab a warm drink after class. These morning Yoga classes will be for parents, carers and staff (i.e. adults only) and be led by Olivia Gibson. We hope to see you there. Please bring a mat along!

Book Week Parade

We are starting off the final week of term with a celebration of literature, reading and having some fun with our whole school community. Join us for our Book Parade on the 15th September from 9:15am onwards, students are encouraged to celebrate the theme ‘Book an adventure’ and dressing up as one of their favourite book characters. 

Professional Learning

Morioka sensei and I attended the Bayside Peninsula Principal forum last week, a statewide forum that provides system level oversight for our school. We were provided with a Government schools state-wide update from the Deputy Secretary and spent time addressing elements of the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM 2.0) including a focus on enabling learning, building capability, planning and improvement cycles aligned to the 2026 Annual Implementation Plan. It was a great day of learning for both of us. 

In addition to this, we had a great session to support our Inclusion Outreach parternship, looking at evaluative data from school based observations that will support us delivering a SMART goal and action plan to look at positive classroom management strategies. Morioka sensei also enjoyed two days working with the Academy of Teaching and Leadership as she continues her own professional learning.  

Thanks for a great fortnight around the school, congratulations to those Magpie supporters last night and best of luck if your footy team is still involved this weekend. Have a great weekend and I look forward to seeing you around the school next week. 

Take Care, 

Edward Strain

Principal