Principal's Report

Conferences

Conferences (formerly Parent Teacher interviews) are being held this Tuesday 17th September from 4.00 – 7.00pm. Teachers will be available for 10 minute meeting times to discuss your child’s learning progress in their class so far this semester. There are still bookings available, so please make sure to book.

Not all teachers work full time, so a number of teachers are only available for a pro-rated amount of time at the Conferences. If there is a teacher that you would like to talk to in particular, and can’t manage to get a booking with them, please email or call them at school, to discuss your child’s learning. It is easier to try to put supports in place earlier, rather than to try to fix a problem if it has been allowed to go on.

Right to Disconnect

As part of the Fair Work Legislation Act, an amendment relating to the right to disconnect was legislated by the Federal Parliament earlier this year and came into effect on 26 August. The legislation makes explicit that all employees have the right to refuse contact from their employer or a third party (such as a student or a parent) outside of their normal working hours, unless that refusal is unreasonable. This means an employee can refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact that occurs outside their normal working hours.

Staff in a school have set hours of work. These hours are taken up in face to face teaching, meetings, or other work. Therefore, many staff do not have access to emails for large portions of a day. This means that emails are often checked at the start or end of a work day. We also have very large numbers of part time employees, some working less than 2 days per week.

With this in mind, it is worth noting that while our staff will endeavour to respond in a timely manner, please be patient when waiting for a reply to an email, especially if you have sent it outside of school work hours. If it is something urgent that can’t wait, please call the office so it can be handled by someone else in the interim.