Principal's Update

Sickness in the community

We have had a significant number of students and staff who have been unwell over the past few weeks. The beginning of winter has certainly had an impact! As an example, we had 36 students away yesterday with illness and 44 students absent from school today. 

It is also proving challenging to find the required number of casual teachers to replace staff who are unable to come to work and, as a result, we have needed to unfortunately split some classes.

We thank the families who have kept their children home from school when they are clearly unwell. 

School gates

Unfortunately, we continue to have problems with the school pedestrian gates. These issues include the intercom function as well as the office being able to operate the gates effectively. 

These issues have been raised with School Infrastructure and we have been assured that the issues will be fixed soon. 

The Kissing Point Rd pedestrian gate will have a soft close operation fitted to the gate soon. We hope that it will offer our community some reassurance that students at Camp Australia will remain safe while parents and carers are using the gate to pick up their children from the centre. We thank our community for their patience with this issue and I am sure you share our concern for the safety of all our students. 

School Events

This week, Stage One showcased their knowledge and work samples at the Insect Gallery exhibit. The exhibition was quite the spectacle, and it was so lovely to see the high student engagement of our students and their family members as they talked about fascinating insects. 

The last week of Term 2 will offer a number of school events and we do hope that our community will continue to engage in these opportunities as we celebrate learning and achievement at Dundas Public School. To help our families plan for these events, below is a preview of the week 10 planner that will be shared on Facebook next week. 

A reminder that all planned events for 2024 can be found on the Events page on the DPS website.

Enrol now for Kindergarten 2025

We are now accepting online enrolments for Kindergarten 2025. Your child can start Kindergarten at the beginning of the school year if they turn five on or before 31 July in that year. By law, all children must be enrolled in school by their sixth birthday.

How to Enrol

If you are an Australian or New Zealand citizen or permanent resident and live within our designated intake area, you are eligible to complete the online enrolment application. You will then need to finalise the application at the school.

Click here to access School Finder and check that your address is in our catchment.

Parents will be asked to complete the 100-point residential address check to confirm they live within the school’s designated intake area.

Click here to read about the 100-point residential address check.

Click here to enrol online.

We look forward to meeting you and your child very soon!

Lost property (previous content)

We have noticed many jackets, hats and drink bottles finding their way to the school’s lost property location over the last couple of weeks. A reminder that the new location for lost property is near the library stairs. 

We encourage parents and carers to regularly check the lost property if items have been misplaced. 

As we sort through lost property, there are a concerning number of items which are either not labelled with the child's name or the labelling has faded so much that it is impossible to read. Please take some time to check that all your child's belongings are labelled clearly to allow any lost items to easily be returned.

Audiri app (previous content)

We continue to be surprised when parents /carers tell us they did not know about the Audiri app and that they had missed important messages. Audiri is the main platform DPS uses to communicate messages quickly with our community. 

Please download the free app to your smart phone if you haven’t done this already.

Below is a summary of the different platforms used by DPS and their intended purpose. 

Weekly planners on DPS Facebook page (previous content)

Are you on Facebook? Are you following the Dundas PS Facebook page? If not, you must check it out!

We regularly share images from organized school events and excursions. Every Friday, we share a weekly planner for the following week. Feedback from parents has been extremely positive as the page has become very important for families when organising their children for the next school week. 

School Events on the school website (previous content)

Another way DPS helps our families plan for future events, is we have planned school excursions/incursions and whole school activities on our school website in the ‘Events’ tab. 

Below is a link to the Events page at the DPS website.

Events - Dundas Public School (nsw.gov.au)

Lee Shipley

Principal