Message from the Director

Dear Colleagues,

Literate Numerate Students for a Hope-Filled Future

NAPLAN has been in the media all week focusing on where our students are at with literacy and numeracy levels. Our focus is always on supporting our students to be literate and numerate for them to realise a hope-filled future. It has been so pleasing to see the NAPLAN results indicate the great work that is happening in our schools. Our Year 3 reading results are incredibly strong showing how many students are reading at the strong or exceeding level. Why the focus on Year 3 reading? At the Law Symposium Murat Didaz, Secretary of the NSW Department of Education, quoted that if students have not met their benchmark by the end of Year 3, only 1 in 5 will by the end of Year 9. The graph below shows that 73.4% of our students are meeting, or exceeding, the benchmark at the START of Year 3. 

Our work in embedding the Non-Negotiables has led to coherent, consistent practice in our classrooms. It is the work of our staff in classrooms that is yielding such positive results for our young people, supported by all our staff in schools and the Armidale Catholic Schools Office. We focus on supporting students in the ‘developing’ and ‘needs additional support’ levels through targeted learning sprints. Our Inclusion Team and school staff work closely with students with disabilities to differentiate instruction, ensuring that every young person experiences growth every year.

Thank you for your continued hard work in using data to inform learning and teaching cycles, embedding the Non-Negotiables, using a coherent instructional framework, supported through strong collaboration both within and across schools and office, based firmly on the teachings of Jesus Christ, in realising our vision for Armidale Catholic Schools:

A Christ-centred inclusive learning community that supports 

young people to realise a hope-filled future.

Book Week

This week is Book Week and I know many of our schools are celebrating this week. I love seeing how each school gets involved, the promotion of reading and the parades. It is so important to promote a love of reading and our work in ensuring our young people have quality literature in their hands. Our librarians do a fantastic job in keeping their collections up to date and encouraging a reading culture. 

St Joseph’s Barraba

St Xavier’s Gunnedah

St Joseph’s Uralla

Regina