Principal's News & Events

Term 1: Week 1 -5 - Welcome! 

It has been a real pleasure to see our students settle into Wembley life so well across the first half of this term. We have loved seeing the growth in independence, confidence and maturity of our returning students, and have loved welcoming new faces to our community, from Prep all the way through to Year 6. 

We have focussed really hard on establishing our routines and procedures in the early part of this term, knowing that predictability and consistency in these structures has such a positive effect on student outcomes. Students have taken to these routines easily, and now our focus will shift towards maintaining them over the remainder of the year. 

School Improvement

Wembley has finalised its Annual Implementation Plan (AIP) for 2026, in collaboration with our Senior Education Improvement Leader. Our AIP is a 1 year plan that moves us towards achieving our overall goals, detailed in our 4 year School Strategic Plan (SSP). In summary, we will be focussed on the following key improvement strategies and actions this year:

Last year we published a one page explainer of our AIP, published on our Website, and will do so again this year.

School Council takes an active role in our School Improvement efforts, and I thank all parents who nominated themselves to become a member of School Council this year. Our first round of nominations resulted in 2 successful candidates - these parents are automatically elected, as we did not exceed the number of required nominations. Upon our second call, which closes today at 4:00pm, we have already received more nominations than the remaining number of vacancies, so we will now move to an election process for these remaining nominees. Please watch out for correspondence regarding this and take an active approach to voting - it is your voice that will secure the successful candidates, not school staff. Voting will open from Thursday March 5th when we will also send out information via Sentral on this next step. We will announce all successful candidates, from round 1 and 2, and the completion of this entire process. 

Buildings and Grounds

Over the school holidays, we secured painting works to re-fresh the external walls of a number of our external portable buildings, including the OHSC building and the Year 4 portables. You may have noticed that we are gradually moving away from green paint, towards an 'Ocean Blue' to align better with our Wembley Colours. 

Immediate works this year will commence with a series of carpet replacements in several rooms throughout the school and installation of new blinds in the Year 4 portable rooms. This work has been secured and scheduled for the Term 1 holidays, so that we interupt learning as least as possible. Thank you to all our parents last year who contributed to the building fund, though their voluntary contributions as this enables us to keep the school environment well-maintained. 

Another project, soon to get underway is the provision of new directional signage at the school - we recognise that we have a number of entry gates and that it is not always clear how to find key buildings/places within the school. In order to proceed with this work, we also want to consider formally naming our buildings, so that we have something else to call our brand new building, other than "the new build"! We have begun the process of seeking student input, but will also be reaching out to parents on this matter - likely through a vote. We are exploring the concept of using themes such as: native plants, famous Australians, past principals or our values animals etc. If you have any ideas that you would like us to consider, please send them through via an email to the office so that we can consider this. 

Grant, our Facilities Manager, has continued promote sustainable practices at the school and once again arranged for excess and 'tired' furniture to be donated through our partnership with Pacific Aid - it's worth noting to new members of our community that throughout our Capital Works building project, Grant donated every piece of furniture possible. 

Grant also arranged for our flags to be replaced, as over the course of 2025 they had started to become tattered: 

This year, Grant and his student 'grounds crew' will also be joined by our two Buildings & Grounds Captains, Mason Lee and Jacob Pham-Phu, along with one of our School Captains, in order to promote greater student involvement in taking care of our school grounds. 

Finances

An enormous thank you to all parents who have made either a full or partial contribution to their voluntary parent payments so far. We worked very hard at the end of last year to simplify and streamline our approach to setting these contributions and in a manner that we hope helps families understand how these contributions are used. 

Curriculum contributions enable us to provide the best resources we possibly can for each child, but also enable us to make more frequent improvements to our grounds. The more we receive through this channel, the more we can direct other exisiting funds to bigger improvement projects - for example, the completion of the big assembly are shade structure. 

Community

Thank you to all parents who have responded to the correspondence from the Wembley Parents Association (WPA) - seeking parent class reps and providing feedback on this year's fund-raising targets. This information was sent via Sentral email. 

The school works closely with the WPA president and together we draft a range of potential targets that address the needs of the school, whislt also reflecting parent and community interest and preference. In 2025, the focus of the fundraising was our new shade structure over the basketball court. 

If you would like to have a say in what we try to achieve this year, please do engage with the WPA. They are also inviting feedback into what events they will promote this year, in order to try and meet their targets; this is also an important stage - ensuring that the events they organise are well-received by parents. 

Thank you to the whole team, but in particular Linh Krygger, the President of the WPA - we are really looking forward to another successful year in partnership. 

Parent Volunteers: last year we had a substantial group of parent volunteers regularly helping at the school, contributing to various aspects of school life including: Breakfast Club, the library, resourcing, lost property, WPA events and general upkeep of the school. Next week we will be putting out a survey to seek parent interest in helping us again this year. In addition, we will also start working with our teachers to commence the process of inviting in parent helpers for the classroom. Watch this space! 

Thank you everyone and please don't hesistate to say hello when you see me in the yard! 

~ Katie McClue ~ 

Beach Program

As part of our mandated Swimming and Water Safety curriculum, our Year 5 and 6 students recently participated in the Beach Program at Williamstown Beach. The Year Fives attended on Friday, 20th February and The Year Sixes on Monday, 23rd February. 

The program was facilitated by the Williamstown Swimming and Life Saving Club and followed a modified Nippers-style format. Across the day, students rotated through a variety of engaging sand and water activities designed to strengthen their confidence, teamwork and awareness in an open water environment. Activities included beach-based fitness challenges, rescue and relay scenarios, surf education sessions, and supported water entries, all carefully supervised by experienced lifesaving instructors.

In previous years, this program had been held at the Port Melbourne Surf Life Saving Club across three separate mornings. With that venue unavailable for 2026, we were pleased to transition to Williamstown Beach, which provided an excellent setting and highly supportive instructors for our students.

Both year levels embraced the experience with enthusiasm and maturity. It was wonderful to see students demonstrating responsibility, perseverance and respect for the coastal environment while developing essential lifelong water safety skills.

Iron Armour Academy 

In 2026, Wembley is excited to share its partnership with Iron Armour Academy to deliver the Iron Champions Program for selected Year 5 and 6 students.

This exciting initiative reflects our ongoing commitment to strengthening student engagement and supporting the development of essential life skills during the important upper primary years. Students selected for the program have demonstrated readiness to further develop their leadership capacity, resilience and positive influence within our school community.

The Iron Champions Program is an 8-week experience designed to equip students with practical tools to build resilience, develop a growth mindset and confidently navigate challenges. Through dynamic, hands-on sessions delivered in partnership with Iron Armour Academy, students will explore strategies to identify and manage behavioural triggers, make positive choices and become inspiring role models within their school, family and wider community — empowering them to “Win the Game of Life.”

Using sport as a powerful engagement platform, the program strengthens social and emotional capabilities through active learning experiences that promote:

• Effective communication — developing listening skills, positive body language and respectful interpersonal interactions
• Teamwork — following directions, cooperating with others and contributing positively to group success
• Emotional expression — understanding and articulating feelings, thoughts and ideas in constructive ways
• Respect and responsibility — taking accountability for behaviour and demonstrating integrity
• Resilience and positivity — adapting to challenges and maintaining an optimistic outlook

We are excited to see our Year 5 and 6 students grow in confidence, leadership and character through this valuable partnership in 2026.

Reminders