Principal's Perspective

Year 6 Jumper Ceremony

Congratulations to our year six students for their delightful and inspiring jumper ceremony. Thank to Darien Hunte, one of our year six teachers for his powerful message about schools being like an ecosystem and that our student leaders are helping everyone experience success. 

Ms ap Rees was moved by the students and their ability to communicate their leadership aspiration on the leader that they wanted to be for themselves and our school community this year.  Thanks to all of our parents and staff who made this important ceremony possible.

Ride-to-School

Thank you to year three teacher Benny Chan for coordinating and organising the Ride-to-School day. It was wonderful to see so many students ride their bike, scooter, roller skates and rollerblades to school. Thank you to parents for supporting this day and ensuring students had their helmets and were supported safely riding on the road/footpath to school. 

At assembly last week we acknowledged and congratulated year six student Jasper Haviland with a principal’s award, for displaying outstanding personal qualities of kindness, care and respect, for assisting a prep student riding his bike to school.  Without being asked, Jasper supported the student by offering words of encouragement and showed him how to be safe on the road and footpath.  Well done and thank you Jasper.

Staffing

After a comprehensive recruitment process, I would like to announce that Julian van Marle has been successfully appointed as our Performing Arts teacher for the remainder of the year.

Julian will be replaced by new staff member Laveena Kukanesan who will commence from the start of term two.  

We welcome Laveena to our wonderful community.

Preps

Our Prep students recently participated in an incursion, The Drama Toolbox, where they were learning about relationships and emotions.  This was connected to their unit of inquiry ‘Who we are’.   Students enjoyed the performances and had a great time.

Annual Reporting Meeting

The Annual Reporting Meeting was held on Monday 23rd March prior to the school council meeting. The 2025 annual report was presented along with a report from the school council president and treasurer.  The 2025 annual report has now been submitted to the Department of Education for approval and once confirmed will be published on our school website. 

While the report may sound like it could be dry and boring, it is a good opportunity for parents to gauge some highlights from the year, read a summary of our goals and the work completed, and see some statistics from the different data sets the school has access to.  It also is a good place to check out the finances of the school and see how we are tracking.

The 2024 annual report is currently on the website, (2024 ASPS Annual Report), I will advise parents and carers once the 2025 annual report has been uploaded to the website.

Trivia Night

Thank you to our wonderful Parents’ Association for providing an opportunity for everyone to show off their trivia skills at the trivia night this coming Saturday.  We wish all participants much success and know that it will be wonderful night.  Have fun and best of luck to everyone!

AEU Industrial Action

Thank you to our families for the understanding and support that was shown during the recent AEU industrial action.  Negotiations are continuing between the Australian Education Union (AEU) and the Victorian Government. 

We are unsure how the negotiations will proceed; however, we hope that this issue is resolved quickly so that teachers and staff can focus on the ongoing learning and development of our students with the appropriate level of resourcing that students need and deserve.

Health & Safety

We recently had a student badly injure themselves on the underside of the overhanging classroom near the basketball court.  We reported this injury and as a result, WorkSafe came and did an inspection of the site. We have been instructed to enclose these spaces to ensure no further accidents can occur.  We have engaged a contractor to do these works, which will start during the school holiday break. 

These spaces are currently fenced off and will remain out of bounds until the permanent structure is installed.

Have a wonderful term break.

Warm regards,

Travis