“We would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people, the first people to dream, create, wonder, dance, play and learn on this breathtaking land. This land was cared for and respected for tens of thousands of years. The First Nations people lived in companionship with the animals and the life on this land. We acknowledge that this is stolen land and we pay our respects to elders, past, present and emerging.”

Rayma Atkinson (2023 Suzanne Peterson Award Recipient)

WhatsApp Groups

If you were part of our school community last year, you might remember that we tried Class Representative Groups using the platform WhatsApp. The intention of the groups was to help families connect with each other and to provide a space where reminders and invitations could also be shared from the school. After the trial our Communications Sub Committee conducted a survey about the different ways we communicate with our families and the feedback we received indicated that families enjoyed having a chance to speak with each other, but felt the involvement of the school somewhat stifled the organic way families liked to communicate with each other. As a result, we have not continued our Classroom Representative Groups in 2024. We do however, encourage families to create groups for their classrooms or other interest groups as a way of connecting. We have known of many informal groups that have helped support students and families in many different ways.

If you are keen to make a WhatsApp group for your class, but don’t have everyone’s contact details, the school office can help facilitate the formation of groups by inviting members of your class through Sentral.

NAPLAN

NAPLAN stands for “National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy” and is an annual assessment conducted with students in grades 3, 5, 7 and 9. NAPLAN assesses the literacy and numeracy skills that students are learning through the school curriculum and allows parents/carers to see how their child is progressing against national standards.

NAPLAN is scheduled to begin 13th March this year, which is earlier than previous years. NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process. It does not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance, but it can provide teachers with additional information about students’ educational progress.

You can read more information about NAPLAN in the PDF attached below. If your child is grade 3 or 5 this year and you have questions about their participation in the assessment, please speak with your child’s classroom teacher.

Voluntary Curriculum Contributions

Our school aims to provide a high-quality learning environment catering for the needs of all students. Our wide and varied curriculum incorporating a number of specialist areas supports a whole-child approach to education. We also aim to maintain and improve our facilities which support our goals of having a vibrant and active school community.

Each year we ask for our families to make a voluntary contribution to the curriculum costs of your child’s learning. The money received helps us pay for the books and stationery in classrooms, resources for lessons, updating our ICT equipment and resourcing our incredible Enviro Science subject.

We have a long history of keeping our voluntary contributions very low; in recent years we have even delayed increasing the contributions to reflect the challenges people were facing in the world at the time. Our contribution amount remains lower than the majority of schools in our area. The PDF attached below outlines how the contributions are allocated by the school.

With an understanding that families have multiple financial commitments, partial payments of voluntary contributions are welcome at any time. If you have any questions, please contact the office in person, via phone or email.

The Nor'Wester

BNWPS is committed to Child Safe Standards and prevention of child abuse

Issue 5 · 26 Feb 2024

In this issue