Message from the Principal 

THANK YOU WORKING BEE LEGENDS

Thank you Working Bee Legends. We really appreciate everyone who gave up their time last Saturday to help look after our school grounds. A real highlight is the work that our students do on this day. They show real pride, purpose and connection to our school. It is GREAT being part of a school community that has so much community support and involvement. 

Cheers to you!

GRASSED OVAL NEARLY READY

We are pleased to announce that our grass oval is nearly ready. We have all waited a very long time, but we are getting close. The temporary fencing will be removed next Friday and then we will have a “soft” launch during the remainder of the year. This will involve opening the oval to specific cohorts of students at a time so that everyone gets a turn and we limit the number of students on it to begin with. Fingers crossed we have some warmer weather as we need the ground to harden a bit more!  

MENTAL HEALTH WELLBEING LEADER

Another exciting announcement is the addition of a Mental Health & Wellbeing Leader (MHWL) position at our school. This is the result of specific government funding, which for our school is 0.6 or 3 days per week. 

MHWLs are qualified teachers who work across the school to implement a whole-school approach to mental health and wellbeing for students, staff, and families based on a broad knowledge of the needs of the school community. This includes:

• building the capacity of school staff, in particular classroom teachers, to identify and support students with mental health concerns in the classroom
• supporting the school to create clear referral pathways internally (within school) and externally (to community services) for students identified as requiring further assessment and intervention

• coordinating targeted mental health support for students by working with regional staff, school wellbeing and leadership teams, teachers, parents/carers, and external agencies.

   

The MHWL role focuses on mental health and wellbeing promotion, prevention and early intervention, rather than the implementation of clinical or allied health approaches.

MHWLs will receive training from the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. 

We recently completed a local based merit and equity process and are pleased to announce the Jess Johnston will be our MHWL starting next year. We advertised this position at a Learning Specialist level so that the role becomes part of our leadership team. Stay tuned for more information in future newsletters!

PLANNING FOR 2026

Preparations for next year are well underway. The next phase of transition into 2026 continues with our Prep Orientation sessions that started on the 10th, 17th November and continue on the 24th November and 1st December. 

We will also turn our whole school into 2026 for 2 x Meet the Teacher sessions on the 4th and 9th of December. 

The Leadership Team is also embedded in school organisation and work force planning for 2026. This includes staffing requirements, positions, and class structures etc. We recently completed a recruitment process and can now officially welcome Sophie Cartelli to our staff team for next year. I am also pleased to confirm that Joshua Hick, Lynsey Barrett, Ruby Cuce, Ruby Bakkum, Keely Jones and Ebony Killmister were successful in securing another 12-month contract at Greenhills next year.

In 2026, we will extend our existing Executive leadership model and structure to include Principal, 2 x Assistant Principals, 3 x Learning Specialists and 1 x Business Manager. The continuation of our dual assistant principal model is made possible next year and beyond through the funding that is part of the Tier 2 Inclusion Model.

Tutor Learning Initiative (TLI) funding will no longer be provided, instead we have a reduced amount of funds labelled as “Literacy & Numeracy Early Intervention Program (LNEIP) = $13,965 “. These funds, along with our small equity funding of $12,704 will be used to support Sharon Draper’s Literacy Support Role.

All Principal Class roles will have a teaching load each week along with some learning support or extension programs as well. This will equate to around 2 days of staffing which will help to reduce the large deficit we are managing. 

Our Learning Specialists will continue to be classroom teaching roles 0.8 (4 days a week) and 0.2 (1 day a week) time allowed for curriculum leadership, coaching, mentoring and working with all teams across the school to deliver our improvement strategies. Each Learning Specialist will also have core responsibility around our two Strategic Plan goals:

• To optimize student learning growth 
• To strengthen student voice and agency. 

Each teaching team (PLT) will also have 1 x team leader who will join as a School Improvement Team. The other members of each team will join one of our SSP Goal teams to provide a working party to assist each of our Learning Specialists. All these teams will work the Exec leadership team to drive and implement our 2026 Annual Improvement Plan.

20 CLASSES

At our Mid-Term 4 Meet with the Principal team last week, we shared our school structure for 2026. This will be built around 20 classes. In a perfect world and with more appropriate school funding we would set up more classes than this. With the budget we are provided, we will stretch our commitments to 20 classes. As you can see by the table, this will involve a deficit of over $200,000 which must be accounted for in the 2027 school year. This works by the Department reducing its quarterly cash grant payment to the school by this amount. This means we must “save up” this amount next year so that we can function and budget appropriately the year after. Many schools must work through this “managed deficit approach” but it is far from ideal. We could not afford to operate with 21 classes and whilst 19 classes would be more financially responsible, it would result in much larger class sizes across all levels of the school. 

The most effective structure we could develop based on our enrolments and budget is to have 5 x Year 3/4 composite classes next year. In doing this, we have forecasted our enrolment projections over the next three years and will make a commitment to this structure for at least this period (whilst the current funding model is in place).

We have developed strong curriculum processes to accommodate for this. This includes operating a two-year Inquiry cycle and detailed English and mathematics planners. We will also make the commitment for all members of this team to attend Year 4 camp and will continue to work through the year to ensure that the students in these year levels are provided with a really rich, engaging and sequential curriculum.

If you have any specific questions or would like to know more about this, please let me know. I would be happy to run another online session with Year 3 and 4 parents and carers if required.

The VGSA 2022 requires that class sizes are planned on the smallest possible within the following guidelines: 

1. Prep - Grade 2: an average of 21 students per class.
2. Grades 3-6: an average of 26 students per class provided that the average class size of 21 at P-2 is maintained.

Greenhills Primary School will have three classes at Year 2 with 26 students, five classes at Year 3 & 4 with 27 or 28 students, three classes at Year 5 with 28 students. This has occurred following consultation with the sub-branch and consultative committee.

These classroom teachers will receive additional time release provided on a pro-rata system each semester for each student above the VGSA ratio. 

This will involve consultation with the consultative committee.

Greenhills 2026 Class Size Average = 23.9 (*23.71 in 2025)

Greenhills 2026 Class Size Average P-2 = 21 (*22.8 in 2025) & Years 3-6 = 26.27 (*25.5 in 2025)

**Please note that this may change into and throughout next year.

We will also operate with 5 specialist subjects for the full school year. These are Italian, Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Physical Education and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Maths). 

The full list of staff for next year and their roles along with a map of where each classroom will be located will be published to the whole school community in a special edition of Contact on Thursday 4th December. This is the same day as our first Meet the Teacher session.

James Penson,

Principal.