Fr Jacob meets the Preps!

Today we had a very special visitor, Fr Jacob. Jacob came over to vsit the Preps in their classroom. I am sure he was grilled with many questions about his role and his life as a priest. We are blessed to have Jacob working closely with our team to ensure children are given every opportunity for faith formation and understandning the world around them from a catholic context.

Parent Association Welcome Picnic

It was wonderful to see so many families at our Welcome Picnic. What a great way to start the beginning of the school year and an opportunity to meet the new families joining our community. We had an ice cream truck, games and plenty of fun for all the children and the adults too! I would like to thank Shane Daveron and Natalie Banks for coordinating the games, Danika Rait and Adele Nittoli for supporting the logistics of the event and the Parents Association for their effort to organise and run the picnic. A great time was had by all.

NAPLAN

Naplan will commence on Wednesday March 11. Whilst NAPLAN provides an important snapshot of where our students are at in comparison to other students, it should be remembered that your child's teacher has other assessments and evidence about their progress throughout the year. For students, they will be prepared well by teachers for the tests and you can assist by ensuring children are well rested and free of anxiety with reassuring words. Their learning journey is over many years and not anchored to NAPLAN results.

The schedule at St Christopher's will be as follows:

Yr 3 Writing 9:30am 11 March

Yr 5 Writing 10:00am 11 March

Yr 3 Reading 11:30am 12 March

Yr 5 Reading 11:30am 12 March

Yr 5 Language Conventions 9:30am 13 March

Yr 5 Numeracy 11:30am 13 March

Yr 3 Language Conventions 9:30am 16 March

Yr 3 Numeracy 9:30am 17March

From the Parent Information website online:

NAPLAN assesses the literacy and numeracy skills that students are learning through the school curriculum, and allows parents and carers to see how their child is progressing against national proficiency standards.

NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process. It does not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance, but it can provide teachers with more information about students’ educational progress.

There is more information for parents available here.

District Swimming

On Thursday 26 February, eight students from St. Christopher's competed in the Highbury Schools District Swimming Carnival. Six schools competed in this event. The following students competed in their age group in the 50m freestyle; Amira Abdul, Lincoln Archibald, Sophie Desperles, Mikayla Leung, Marlow Tran and Pennie Tran. Alexander Archibald competed in both the 50m freestyle and breaststroke. Well done to all of these students who competed valiantly. Special mention to Marlowe Tran (first place) and Mikayla Leung (second place) who will represent our school at the Division level next week.

Child Safety Standard 1

At St Christopher's we are guided by our Catholic faith and the unique and unrepeatable dignity of every person in our care. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive and protective environment where every child can feel and be safe.

In February we highlighted Child Safety Standard 1: Organisations establish a culturally safe environment in which the diverse and unique identities and experiences of Aboriginal children and young people are respected and valued. Each month we will highlight a standard. Please join us in maintaining child safety at St Christopher's School by reading each of the flyers and contributing to implementing the standards.

School Leaders

We congratulate all of our 2026 school leaders who recieved their badges at our assembly on Friday. They have started the year very well, taking on extra responsibilities including running assemblies, being buddies to our preps, managing waste, planting in our garden beds, running lunchtime sport activities and much more. We look forward to working with them throughout the year.

School Captains : Sophie Desperles, Rastin Soroush

Vice Captains : Mikayla Leung, David Fan

House Captains

Red House : William Konstantakopoulos, Yinuo Zhang

Blue House : Mikkel Mafole, Renee Lee

Green House : Aaron Goyal, Tejvir Gill

Gold House : Vihaan Chatla, Naomi Thomas

Social Justice : Ivanka Zhao, Olivia Wu

Environmental : David DeLa Cruz, Tejvir Gill

Wellbeing : David Fernando, James Li

Student awards

Back Row: Raziel Reuben, David Fernando, Rian Kim, Eve Zaras, Max Lin, Annie Liao, Lincoln Archibald, Christof Fonseka.

Front Row: Amy Tian, Amani Mwangi, Sasen Bamunusingha, Jasper Wang, Zachary Zhang, Vincent Chen, Kevin Chen-Widayat, Mitchell Lund.

Farewell Tracey and Welcome Kate

Over the Christmas break Tracey Atkinson informed us of her intention to take her long service leave from early in Term 1 and then retire. We only had Tracey here for a few weeks this year and we gave her a heartfelt farewell from all the staff with some gifts and a morning tea. Tracey has been a fantastic office administrator over many years but at St Christopher's School since 2021. She has been the main office contact person for all our students, families and provided efficient office operations with warmth and care. She will be greatly missed and we wish her well in retirment.

Welcome to Kate Borg who joins Vidya in the office as an office administrator. Kate brings a wealth of expereince which spans both business and education, joining us from St Michael's Ashburton where she was responsible for multiple roles including being a learning support officer, administering the library and helping out in the office. I am sure you will join me in making Kate feel welcome to our St Christopher's community.

PARENT HANDBOOK 2026