Principal's Column

WELCOME TO THE 2025 SCHOOL YEAR 

We have loved welcoming back all of our families over the last two weeks and extend a very special welcome to our new students and their families—you are now part of our Westgrove family! 

Since being back, our staff and students are focusing on building positive classroom environments, establishing classroom routines and fostering a strong sense of being a community of learners.  Throughout this time, it has been amazing to see how quickly the children have settled into their new learning environments and demonstrate our school expectations.

We look forward to a fantastic year ahead!

NEW STAFF TO WESTGROVE

We are excited to introduce a number of new staff to our staffing team this year who all bring a range of experience and expertise to our school community. They have all excited to be part of school community and have settled into Westgrove quite seamlessly.

• Courtney Lawrence (Leading Teacher of Learning & Years 4-6/ Specialist)
• Madison Agius (Prep PA)
• Sonia Pezzano (Prep PA)
• Emma Acciarito (Grade 2AR)
• Jessica Wade (Grade 4W)
• Candice Morgan (PE)
• Caroline Cronin (Education Support)
• Georgia Dearlove (Education Support)
• Harshala Gupta (Education Support)

2025 PREP STUDENTS’ FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

Last Monday we welcomed our 2025 Prep cohort to school! The children have had a wonderful and extremely settled start to school. Over the last two weeks they have started to get used to routines and school. We thank our Prep families for their support, not only recently but over the last 6 months throughout the transition process, as this has contributed to the children's successful transition to school. A big thank you also needs to go out to our wonderful Prep team (Miss. Karutz, Miss. Lhuede, Miss. Thorp, Miss. Pezzano, Miss. Agius, Miss. Cruz and Mrs. Thompson) for all their work and dedication to our students. We look forward to an exciting year ahead!

2025 STUDENT LEADERS

It is with great pleasure that we announce our 2025 Student Leadership Team. We would like to congratulate them on their successful appointment and look forward to their contributions to our school community over the coming year.

Last year these students went through class speeches, cohort voting, teacher review and an ‘interview’ with the Principal class. We would like to thank the 2024 Year 5 team for all the work in preparing the students for these roles and supporting them through the selection process.

CURRICULUM DAY (No School) - 14th February 2025

Today we continued our Berry St Training, where we focused on building our understanding on how to create a culture of academic persistence in our classrooms by nurturing student resilience, emotional intelligence and a growth mindset and to motivate students with strategies that increase their willingness to learn. We are looking forward to applying our new knowledge into our practice throughout the year ahead.

PERSONAL GOODS BROUGHT TO SCHOOL (inc. Mobile Phones and watches)

All Principals are asked by the Department of Education (DE) to annually remind parents, students and staff that private property brought to school is not insured and that DE accepts no responsibility for loss or damage. Please note that students must not bring their own electronic games, ‘gadgets’, computers/ tablets, cameras or mobile phones to school.  Attached is our Mobile Phone Policy outlining our procedures & requirements for children who bring their mobile phones to school. 

ANNUAL PRIVACY REMINDER 

Our school collects and uses student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in our schools’ Privacy Policy and our school’s Privacy Collection Notice. We ask parents/carers to review our school’s collection statement, found on our website https://www.westgrps.vic.edu.au/policies.

For more information about privacy, refer to: https://www.vic.gov.au/schools-privacy-policy-information-parents.  This information is also available in ten community languages: Amharic, Arabic, Dari, Gujarati, Mandarin, Somali, Sudanese, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese.

STUDENT ACCIDENT INSURANCE 

Principals have also been asked to remind parents that the Department does not provide personal accident insurance for students. Parents and carers are responsible for paying the cost of medical treatment for their own children and this includes transport cost. 

The Department is aware of the number of insurers including JUA Underwriting Agency Pty Ltd, EBM Insurance Brokers Pty Ltd and JLT Pty Ltd who provide accident insurance policies for students. These policies provide cover for a reasonably low cost for students who are injured in accidents. Other insurers may also do so.