Principal's Message 

Loving Lord,

We thank you for our new partnership. Bless our school community as we look forward to the exciting opportunities ahead. May these new lunchtime spaces and playground projects bring joy, growth, and connection to our students. Guide all who support us as we journey through a wonderful term together.

St Andrew’s and Mannix College Partnership

Dear St Andrew’s School Community,

I am thrilled to share some wonderful news about a brand-new partnership launching this term. St Andrew’s Primary School has officially teamed up with Mannix College for an exciting Semester 2 Pilot Program. This collaboration brings enthusiastic Mannix student volunteers into our school to support our learning, wellbeing, and community spaces.

These initiatives represent fantastic possibilities for this semester and potentially well into the future, designed to enrich our students' daily school experience. Here is a look at what could be in the works for this semester:

Lunchtime and Recess Wellbeing Clubs 

Our new lunchtime and recess clubs are all about supporting student wellbeing. By welcoming Mannix volunteers, we are increasing our supervision capacity so we can expand access to these extracurricular activities for even more children. The initial lineup of student-led possibilities includes everything from Italian, Table Tennis, and Soccer to Choir, Coding, Wellbeing, Art, Crochet, and Chess.

The Cubby Village Project

Something our Student Voice Team has been passionately promoting in recent times is a cubby house for our playground. Thanks to a generous $5,000 community grant from Bendigo Bank, we are planning to make this dream a reality. By involving the Mannix project team - who will help us with sourcing materials, construction, painting, and landscaping - we are hoping to stretch this funding to build a whole Cubby Village rather than just a single pre-built structure.

The School Art Show 

As you know, 2026 is our year to showcase student creativity through our new St Andrew's Art Show. We are hoping to have a Mannix resident studying Art Curation volunteer alongside our Visual Arts teacher to help curate the exhibition, while other residents will assist behind the scenes with event setup and pack-down.

Next Steps 

Our very next step is to present these wonderful opportunities to the Mannix College students to see which specific projects and clubs they would like to volunteer for. Please rest assured that all volunteers will undergo rigorous onboarding, including Working with Children Checks and Child Safe inductions, and all activities will remain fully supervised by St Andrew's staff.

We are looking forward to the incredible benefits this will bring to our students' wellbeing, confidence, and school environment. You can certainly expect to see some very exciting stories coming home from the children later in the term.

Regards

Brian Martin

Principal