Principal's Report 

Principal’s Newsletter

There has been plenty happening across BNPS over the past fortnight, with wonderful learning experiences both inside and beyond our school grounds. It was my first experience of the famous BNPS Disco. Wow! What a great event run by our incredible Parents & Friends. I loved seeing Bodhi from Year 3 providing DJ entertainment as classes had their photo taken.

 This is a great reminder of the range of skills and interests our community bring with them into our environment.

Our Year 1 students have been particularly busy. It was fantastic to smell pizza baking through the school recently, and I would like to thank the Year 1 parents who volunteered to help. Experiences like these simply cannot happen without your support, and we are very grateful.

Year 1 also travelled to Belgrave for a ride on Puffing Billy. This historic railway was a feature of my own primary school experience, and I still remember those excursions fondly. I hope our students will look back on their Puffing Billy adventure with just as much pleasure many years from now. These are the experiences that make primary school special.

Book Week

I am very much looking forward to Book Week next week. Reading is such an important part of learning, but celebrating books also reminds us of something beyond literacy skills: the sheer magic of stories.

I encourage families to continue reading aloud to their children for as long as they possibly can. They will be in secondary school before you know it, and opportunities like these become harder to capture! There is something particularly powerful about sharing a chapter book together. A complex story allows children to watch characters grow and change, and to see their values and beliefs evolve. Through stories, children discover that people are imperfect and that behind behaviour we may not understand is often a story that other characters cannot see.

Novels give us a window into humanity in all its complexity. They help us develop empathy, curiosity and an understanding of perspectives beyond our own. How lucky we are to be able to read.

Playing for Fun

I do, however, want to raise a concern about the increasingly competitive nature of some games in our school grounds.

Our playground games are for fun, participation and connection. They are not serious sporting competitions. We have students of many different ages and abilities sharing our oval and basketball courts, and everyone needs to be able to participate safely. I certainly do not want a child injured through overzealous play at school and then unable to participate in the organised sport they love on the weekend.

I have also heard some language between students that does not belong in our playground. During the week, I noticed students taunting friends when they missed a goal, seemingly believing this was a normal part of playing sport. At BNPS, it isn't. If someone misses a goal, we encourage them to have another go. We build our friends up rather than cut them down.

Our children may see elite athletes engaging in highly competitive behaviour, but the school playground is a very different environment. I ask families to reinforce this distinction at home. I have been concerned by some of what I have heard recently, but I also know our students are capable of doing much better. Sport should bring children together, and that is the culture we want to see in our playground.

Bike Safety

On Friday, we welcomed members of the Proactive Policing Unit to BNPS to speak with students about bike safety. They spoke with our Year 6 students about the important role our senior students play in modelling safe behaviour for younger children. They also addressed the whole school with a simple message: police are here to support our community, and part of that role is helping everyone understand and follow the rules that keep us safe.

This includes our expectation that bikes and scooters are not ridden on school grounds. Since our new signs were installed, I have noticed a significant reduction in riding on site, which is encouraging. We still have some work to do in ensuring everyone understands that this expectation applies at all times, including after hours and on weekends.

We value our relationship with the Proactive Policing Unit and look forward to welcoming them back to BNPS in the future.

Swimming

Our Years 2 and 3 students have now completed their swimming program—thank goodness! I love swimming, but perhaps not quite so much in the middle of a Melbourne winter.

Thank you to Kirsty Hall and all our Year 2 and 3 teachers for managing such a significant logistical exercise, along with the inevitable frayed nerves that come with moving large numbers of young children between school, buses, change rooms and swimming pools. Programs like these provide important experiences for our students, and they rely on an enormous amount of work behind the scenes.

BNPS' contribution to the education system

Throughout this term, we have been proud to welcome several visitors to our school to watch our teachers in action. BNPS is quickly gaining a reputation as a school to watch when it comes to explicit teaching and the Explicit Mathematics Program. Those who come to watch our teaching practice are teachers and leaders from other Victorian Government schools who are looking to us for guidance and support as they implement the same work in their own schools. It is essential to contribute to the wider system and ensure we are not only building our own practice for our own students, but building others' practice so that students across Victoria are supported and receiving the best possible instruction. For us, we have a huge advantage in our rich history with PYP. We are able to extend and enrich students with inquiry opportunities on top of the explicit teaching, which we think is just marvellous. These are occasions where you see if the learning has transferred, and if students really are risk takers.

Bullying, No Way!

This week, BNPS participated in Bullying, No Way! with this year's theme, Small Acts = Big Impact. Students took part in lessons and discussions designed to reinforce the importance of kindness, respectful relationships and the impact our words and actions can have on others.

This work does not begin and end with a particular week. It is part of the ongoing work we do with students throughout the year, and we ask families to continue these conversations at home.

It is also important that children learn to distinguish bullying from conflict, friendship difficulties and isolated incidents of unkind behaviour. Bullying involves repeated and deliberate behaviour where there is an imbalance of power and a person or group is harmed. That distinction matters—not because unkind behaviour is acceptable, but because using the right language helps adults understand what is happening and respond appropriately.

Children are learning how to navigate friendships, regulate emotions and understand the impact they have on others. Every child is capable of saying or doing something unkind at times. Our job as adults is to address it, help them understand its impact, and teach them how to make a better choice next time.

Thank you to the parents, carers and staff who reinforce these messages every day. When the school and families work together to model kindness, respect and responsibility, we give our children the best opportunity to become the people we know they can be.

Wishing everyone a wonderful couple of weeks ahead.

Warm regards,

Julia Stoppa

Principal