Principal's Message 

It has been a delightful two weeks at ENPS with SO many wonderful highlights! I thoroughly enjoyed spending time in the Year Four classes this week getting to see their writing and reading lessons in action. I was incredibly impressed with their engagement in understanding, identifying and crafting complex sentences using subordinate clauses, as well as their reading inquiry into the Kate DiCamillio text, 'The Tale of Despereaux!' I didn’t want to leave, yet managed to keep sneaking in and out of all four classes throughout the morning! 

I also had a wonderful time celebrating writers in 2FO on Thursday when they shared their writing from their local walk excursion to Keilor Road! They also helped me practise our Harmony Day song for assembly too! Check out our fabulous selfie! 

The Executive team also had the pleasure of Alex from 5JM sharing his recount of his weekend at the Melbourne Grand Prix. Alex was beaming and we loved celebrating his learning success too! 

I’ve been really loving my special Thursday lunches with the Student of The Week token recipients. In Week Seven, I had the pleasure of lunching with Evla (1AM) and Xavi (2FO) and their selected friends Fletcher and Charlotte, while last Thursday it was a joy to lunch with Nivaan (6GU) and Hugo (3MG) and their friends Lucas and Van. I love hearing all their ideas for improving our school and this week especially valued the feedback and ideas for improving our student toilets. Congratulations to all of our students who were awarded token for being safe, kind and/or respectful last week!

In exciting news, the Year 5/6 playground was also FINALLY opened on Thursday! The playground upgrade began a year ago and our senior students have certainly been incredibly patient waiting for it to be completed after extensive delays! 

And a highlight of a difference this week was receiving an email from Luca B (4CT) currently on holidays in Italy. Check out the photo to see why he shared it with me! He was certainly connecting with my family’s cultural connections! (Yes, there is actually a town in Italy called Barletta!)

Cultural Diversity Week, Harmony Day and Countries of ENPS

Like every year, the opportunity to celebrate the diversity of our community and take meaningful action as we acknowledged Harmony Day and Cultural Diversity Week, has yet again been something very special to be a part of.

Our celebration of Cultural Diversity Week, and Harmony Day on Friday, was a true reflection of our ENPS community. To top off the week with our very special ‘Countries of ENPS’, along with our special assembly on Friday, it certainly showcased the rich and empowering diversity we have as a school. And I do love playing the role of the airline pilot for the morning too as we 'travel' around the world! 

We are so incredibly proud of our inclusivity and sense of connectedness at school and to have this celebration supported by so many parents and carers, coming together to share their cultural backgrounds with our students was marvellous. Even though it was a modified version of the event this year, we can’t thank our parent volunteers enough!! 

As a staff on Wednesday, we enjoyed a culinary celebration of food from around the world with a special lunch. We all bought along a plate to be enjoyed, and it was certainly a very international celebration!

As a school with forty-three different languages spoken in our homes, it was a wonderful celebration of our richness and extraordinary diversity. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our school community for all their contributions throughout our cultural diversity celebrations, especially the parents who volunteered their time for ‘Countries of ENPS’, and those who shared their own cultures and experiences at our special assembly. We also acknowledge the leadership of Sharon McWhinney, Tanya Ward and Morgan King as our Community Engagement and Intercultural Inclusion Team, who passionately coordinate these incredible events. At ENPS everyone really does belong!

School Council Update

Our 2026 School Council has met for the first time last week, welcoming new members to their roles and electing office bearers for the year. We welcome and congratulate our newly established School Council and thank all the members of our community that attended our public Annual Public Meeting on Monday evening. More updates and information can be found on the School Council page of this newsletter.

ENPS Values Mural

Last week our Foundation students commenced full time at school and this week they even got to add their mark (or hand prints) on the ENPS Values Mural. Last year all students and staff made their commitment to being safe, kind and respectful by leaving their hand print on the wall. We have now added our 2026 Foundation students along with all new Year One to Six students and staff! The mural is so symbolic of our incredible school community and a real feature of what it means to be a learner at ENPS.  

National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN)

Friday marked the conclusion of our NAPLAN testing window for 2026. We are so proud of our students in Years Three and Five that participated throughout the past two-week period. NAPLAN tests assess student knowledge and skills in writing, reading, conventions of language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy. Thank you to our teachers and families for supporting students to feel prepared, supported and confident. A very special mention to Alice Stephens and Darcy Wynd for the enormous amount of work they have done in preparing and supporting the school throughout this process.

2027 Open Day and Enrolments

Planning for our upcoming Open Day is now well and truly underway. We will be hosting our Open Day on Thursday 30th April and Friday 1st May, with tours being conducted at 9am, 12pm and 2pm. 

We take the opportunity to remind families that we do have a school enrolment policy and rigorous accountability regarding taking enrolments from within our school boundary. Enrolments for 2027 Foundation students will open on Monday the 20th of April. Look out for further information coming on Compass. 

The Year 6-7 Transition process is also about to begin in early Term Two. We ask our Year Six families to please check their enrolment details to ensure all contact and address details are correct on our system prior to the process beginning. 

ENPS Cross Country

This Wednesday our Year Three to Six students will participate in our Cross Country event. We look forward to representing our House Teams and we wish everyone all the best. We love seeing all of our fabulous house team shirts on full display! 

Walkathon

We are all super excited for our Walkathon which will take place this Friday 27th March! Just by fundraising, your child will get a prize and help our school. Please check Compass for regular updates, including prize booklets, details for the day and other information. Create your online fundraising account here www.myprofilepage.com.au.

New Flags

Thanks to a special delivery from the Federal government member for Maribyrnong, Jo Briskey MP, on Friday, our School Captains, Georgia and Ethan got to unfurl brand new Australian and Aboriginal flags for the quadrangle. We also have the Torres Strait Islander flag however only have two flagpoles! We hope that through our fundraising this year we can re-develop and resurface the quadrangle, to also include a third flagpole! 

Industrial Action Tomorrow 

As widely communicated, The Australian Education Union has advised of a statewide stop work for Victorian public school staff tomorrow, Tuesday 24th March, as part of ongoing industrial action. Please refer to previous Compass message regarding this. 

We appreciate that industrial action can be challenging for families and students and thank our families and community for their support. The decision to take this action has been made at a statewide level and is directed at the government, not at our students or community. Our staff remain committed to the learning, safety and well-being of every student at our school and want the best for them. Please remember that there will be extremely limited supervision of students available tomorrow with almost all staff taking action.

We thank you for your support.

Kate Barletta

Principal