From the Desk of the

Curriculum AP...

Last week, I had the honour of attending the ANZAC Day Dawn Service at Halliday Park with our school captains. It was a very well attended event, with representatives from different schools and community groups laying wreaths and participating in the service. Our school captains read the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae, an extremely moving poem which paints a vivid picture of the poppies that bloomed in Belgium amongst the graves of fallen soldiers. It speaks to the bravery and sacrifice of those who gave their lives in service of others. Despite the early start, the captains represented Mitcham Primary School superbly on the day, and I’m sure it is something they will remember and reflect on over the years.

As we are nearing the middle of Term 2, and so the end of Semester One, teachers are beginning to prepare student reports. When reports are published at the end of term, you will notice that our reports format has changed, and over the next few weeks we will be explaining those changes in more detail. One of the key changes that you will notice is around Mathematics reporting. This is because the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) recently published its revised mathematics curriculum (Mathematics curriculum 2.0). All Victorian government schools will start using the Mathematics curriculum 2.0 in 2024 or 2025. At Mitcham Primary School, we have begun using Maths 2.0 and will report against it starting from Semester One this year.

On your child's previous report, the teacher reported against the 3 strands of the achievement standard for mathematics (Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability). Under the Mathematics curriculum 2.0, your child’s teacher will report against the achievement standard as a whole, providing a single, aggregated score. 

As the achievement standards reported on have changed, the first time you receive a report under the Mathematics 2.0 curriculum, it will only show achievement and not progress. For all reports after this, progress will be shown against the single achievement standard. 

The VCAA made these changes to help teachers plan their teaching and learning programs in mathematics, giving them more flexibility to support students to link ideas within mathematics and with other curriculum areas. 

For further information, please refer to the department’s policy on Reporting Student Achievement and Progress Foundation to 10.

Michelle Anderson

Assistant Principal