Dear Parents and Carers,

A very warm welcome back to St Mary’s for 2024. It has been wonderful seeing all the smiling faces of our students return to school. I am very please with the way they have returned and the calm and smooth start to the year we have all enjoyed.

I wish to extend my congratulations to our 2024 Foundation students and their parents on the smooth and settled way they have begun the year. All staff are very impressed with this group and are looking forward to seeing them grow and develop in the years to come.

I hope you had a restful and enjoyable Christmas and New Year break. Our family had a terrific one, moving into our much anticipated new family home just before Christmas. It has been lovely transforming our new house into our family home and enjoying the time there with our friends and family. Bonus is I am only 8 minutes drive from St Mary’s! Both Jess and I have gained about 1.5 hours of travel time back into our day and we are trying our best to savour and use it well.

It has been great to see many parents and families as I am running the Maribyrnong or out shopping at Highpoint. Our family is thoroughly enjoying living in the area and we are making the most of it.

Be Ready 2024

Our St Mary’s theme for 2024 is Be Ready. There are numerous biblical references for this theme and Olivia writes about one in her newsletter entry in this edition. I opened up our staff planning day this year with this theme and the personal connections I have with it. My family crest (Johnstone) motto is nunquam non paratus - never unprepared.

As we worked through our theme it became clear to me that my family crest motto and our 2024 St Mary’s theme of Be Ready are quite similar. They are themes I try to live by and themes I work to model to our staff, students and community. Of course, in life we can never truly be prepared or ready for any and everything that comes our way. However, we can be intentional and organised about how we spend our time in order to get the most out of our busy lives.

I wonder in what ways have your families prepared for the 2024 year? I wonder if there are big events, opportunities or challenges that you are trying to be ready for in 2024? Our students and staff have undertaken much work to ensure that we are ready for a great 2024 and navigate those unexpected twists and turns that will inevitably come our way.

I invite you to have a conversation with your children about how you as an adult make sure you are ready for work, play and life in general. At St Mary’s we will work on ensuring students are ready to learn and give their best this year and look forward to brilliant progress for all of our students.

Foundation 2025 enrolments open

February 19

Enrolments for Foundation 2025 open on Monday 19th Feb 2024. Families are welcomed to come for a school tour at St Mary's on open mornings on Friday 1st March 2024 and Friday 15th March 2024 from 9am until 10am.

Enrolments close on Friday 26th April at 4.00pm

If you are an existing parent with a child due to start Foundation in 2025 please ensure you fill out an enrolment form for your child at your earliest convenience. If you know of families wanting to enrol their child for 2025, please pass this information onto them.

We are aware of some issues with our website displaying old enrolment information on mobile devices and have now resolved them.

Creativity and Innovation Hub Renovations

Over the holidays I spent a good amount of time opening the school for tradesmen to work on our newly renovated Creativity and Innovation Hub - the Creative Arts and STEAM room. A special thank you to the parents on our end of year working bee who helped clear the old carpet and made way for the durable polished concrete surface to be created. The spaces are large, bright and set up for creativity, making and innovation. I am very pleased with the result and the fact our students now have a dedicated hub in the school in which they can develop their creative skills.

Creativity is such as key skill in the modern workforce and one that is applicable to all fields from the fine arts to engineering and science. I am of the firm belief that instilling the skill and disposition of creativity in the students of St Mary’s will be a key element in their successful flourishing post their time here. I am very pleased that we now have the space to nurture creativity and we will continue to add and embellish these spaces as budget and time allow.

The creation of these spaces was a direct result from the fundraising efforts of our community and accordingly, I would like to express my gratitude for the genorosity showed towards St Mary's from our families.

School Review

This year St Mary’s is in the fourth year of its School Improvement Cycle and this means we will be externally reviewed on our performance as a school across five key areas: Learning and Teaching, Leadership, Community, Religious Education and Wellbeing. I am looking forward to this process as it will give us an objective assessment of where our strengths and areas for improvement lie from an exterior perspective.

Following on from this review we will develop our next four year plan, an endeavour I am in anticipation of. With our staff, we will shape up what the next four years will look like, what our key focus areas will be and how we will achieve them. I am thoroughly enthused by this process and look forward to working with passion to make our great school, an exemplary one.

We look to continue to strengthen our partnerships with you as parents of our students and are set up to have a productive, inspiring and fruitful year at St Mary’s in 2024.

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay connected,

Denis Johnstone

Principal

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