Dear Parents and Carers,

I wanted to begin by thanking you all for your support throughout Term 1. It has been a fun and exciting term with many events occurring across all year levels over the last few weeks, which you will be able to explore through the newsletter. I’d like to begin by acknowledging the work of our Whitehorse Family Network who have coordinated and supported a number of events across the school, in particular the Welcome BBQ on Friday afternoon. This was a highly successful event that was well attended by both school and kinder families and could not run without parent support. Thank you to Megan & Mike, Chantelle, Suni, Marina, Sarah, Sharon, Evelyn, Marion, Louisa, Patrick, Georgia & Michael, Matt, Coral and Michael for their contributions to the BBQ.

Cross Country

Well done to all our students who participated in the House Cross Country on Friday. The highlights were seeing all students try their best and acknowledging the success of others throughout the day. Thank you to Mr Scarfo and the staff who organised another highly successful event. We wish the best of luck to those students who are moving onto District Cross Country in Term 2.

Changes to School Newsletter

Moving forward, Whitehorse PS will be utilising iNewsletter by Naavi to deliver its newsletter to families. This will allow us to include more images of students and also the ability for the newsletter to be translated by Google into a number of different languages. Please let me know if you need any assistance or have any feedback!

Ride2School Day

On Tuesday we had many students, parents and staff participate in Ride2School Day. This was a great opportunity for students to be active on their way to and from school. Thank you to Ms Gelb and the Junior School Council for coordinating the event and our Whitehorse Family Network helpers Evelyn, Elaine, Coral, Sarah and Monica who handed out fruit to our riders.

Will Hansen - Cooper (Former student) represents Australia

One of our former students Will Hansen - Cooper will be representing Australia next Month in an International Gymnastics Competition. To support Will, the school will be holding a free dress day on Friday 19th of April and an incursion where students can learn more about Will's journey and practice some gymnastics skills. Please read the article further along in the newsletter for more information.

CCTV

I want to inform our community, as a courtesy, that we have CCTV cameras all around Whitehorse PS. The purpose of these cameras is to provide security for our school campus out of school hours. CCTV is a very effective deterrent and helps us to ensure we are not subject to vandalism. The footage is kept for a short time and is only accessed if there is an issue.

School Council

Our school council met last Tuesday evening for our second meeting together as a 2024 team. This meeting addressed our 2023 Annual Report and our Annual Implementation Plan for 2024. The Annual Report will be released to the wider community in the near future, however I thought it would be worth highlighting some of the fantastic results that Whitehorse Primary School achieved over 2023, where we achieved well above the state in all areas and above similar schools in 5 out of 6 learning domains.

Well done to our Year 3 and 5 students who participated in NAPLAN over the last few weeks. The students completed assessments in Writing, Language Conventions, Reading and Numeracy. We look forward to receiving those results in the next few months. The results of NAPLAN allow us to reflect on the success of our teaching and learning approaches across the school and drive future directions of the school.

School Wide Positive Behaviour

Last week, our school received communication from the Department of Education that we had been awarded a 'Blue Level' award for our work in relation to School Wide Positive Behaviour. This work has been driven by our Wellbeing Sub Committee and Wellbeing Professional Learning Teams throughout 2023. We continue to work to develop our approaches to School Wide Positive Behaviour that is supporting us in creating safe learning environments for all students.

Foundation enrolments 2025/Year 6 - 7 Transition - Online Portal

In 2023, the Department of Education introduced a new process for Foundation (Prep) enrolment that included a timeline to follow. Having a set date for enrolment worked very well in 2023 and was an effective change that provided schools with more certainty earlier in the school year.

This year the Department of Education is taking this a step further with the introduction of a new online system for putting in applications for enrolment. Families will put in an online application to enrol via the new ‘Insight’ Portal using a quick and easy process. Basically, it will be a matter of entering your child’s name, residential address and then choosing Whitehorse PS as your school. Like any new process, we will work through it with our families. A reminder will be sent out to our community in Term 2 with instructions.

The state-wide Year 6-7 transition process will begin in the first week of next term, with all Year 6 students in Victoria receiving a transition information pack. This pack will detail the transition process, including the relevant documentation required to apply for secondary schools. Please note for most families you will need to register and submit your preferences via an online portal. Please keep an eye out for this very important information early next term. In the meantime, we encourage our senior students and their families to attend open days/night and tour secondary schools in the area to become familiar with the possible schools your child may attend. If interested, please contact your local Catholic or Independent Secondary Schools to inquire into their enrolment process, as they differ from the shared process of all Government Secondary Schools.

On behalf of all the staff at Whitehorse PS I would like to wish all families a happy holidays and we look forward to returning to school on Monday April 15th.

Kind regards,

Andrew Den Elzen

Principal

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