Principal's News

Welcome Back

It is really exciting to be back with our school community for the year ahead. There was a great buzz about the school on Tuesday morning with our Year 1-6s returning onsite, with many smiles and impromptu catchups with students and families providing a great sense of routine restored. I trust that each of you had a really nice opportunity to unwind over the holiday break and spend time with those special to you, in the company of a good book, a set of golf clubs or a beach towel. I enjoyed a great break with plenty of time at the beach with my children and a chance to compete in the Australian 12ft cadet championships at Royal Brighton Yacht Club.

Week 1:

The first day for all staff began on Monday, providing an opportunity to establish expectations and set the agenda for the year ahead. On this day, we spent considerable time on our bilingual learning approach, a focus on individual Education Plans, our wellbeing framework and our 12month targets for school improvement via our Annual Implementation Plan (AIP). Day 2 and the remainder of the week was a great success, with students from 1-6 settling in exceptionally well. I would like to thank the staff for making the students feel so at ease, but also acknowledge the work that was put in last year during the transition program. Our students have hit the ground running, which is exactly what we were hoping for! It was also wonderful to see so many parents in and around the school and we hope that this continues! As the week has unfolded it is already business as usual and the students are getting on with learning!

CPS Calendar

The school term starts with a bang and teachers have worked really hard over the final weeks of 2023 and over the holiday break to prepare for an exciting Term 1, please ensure you familiarise yourself with the calendar of events in our newsletter, there are a number of activities for all year levels and plenty of opportunities to be involved in our school community.

Communications

Communication at Caulfield Primary School will predominantly flow through SchoolStream as the first port of call, so I encourage families to make sure they have this app. Teaching teams will be continuing to use the See-Saw app in 2024, in addition to this, teacher email addresses are shared below as a direct means of communication. Each year level will provide monthly newsletters with the whole school newsletter circulated on a fortnightly basis. Parents will likely notice that the preps and Year 5 & 6 students will most likely receive more notifications throughout the year than the standard, as there is often a lot going on at both ends, for example the 100 days of prep and the Year 6 graduation. Please do not be alarmed if your child is in Years 1 to 4 and it feels like they are receiving fewer notifications, that’s to be expected. In addition to this, I manage our Instagram account (@caulfieldps) which provides some added ability to interact and engage with the school.

2024 Parent Payments Reminder

Parent payments help the school to operate effectively. At CPS, we continue to keep our contributions very low, however those additional funds are the difference between providing the additional programs, such as a significant investment in technology, that cannot be delivered without the support of families. We would like to thank the parents that have already made these payments and strongly encourage all families to do what they can. Parent payment plans are available if families would feel more comfortable paying in termly instalments or if circumstances arise, please come and speak to me.

School Council Elections

Information regarding the 2024 School Council election process will be circulated via schoolstream and in our next newsletter. I would encourage any interested parent to contact me for more information. School council is an extremely vital part of the school and it is from council that we take our direction. Council approves external contracts, provides advice and consent on a range of areas and oversees school finance. Please look out for this if you think you may be interested in nominating or being nominated. Information includes a timeline and summary of the role of School Council.

Arriving at School on-time

Thank-you to the many families who ensure their child arrives on time to school every day. Punctuality is an important life skill and a great habit to form early in life. Students ideally should arrive at school around 8.45am, which allows enough time to enjoy a quick catch up with friends before the first school bell. At 8.45am, a teacher is on ‘yard duty’ and therefore supervision is provided from this time onwards. We are asking that children do not arrive at school early unless they remain in the care of an adult until 8.45am to ensure they are supervised adequately.

Lateness and lost opportunities are a big focus for the Department of Education and our school this year, the accumulated absence or lateness does add up to significant lost learning time. Consider this:

A student who is late by half an hour each day misses the equivalent of 16.6 days of learning each year.
An 80% attendance rate is the equivalent of missing one day per week or 40 days of lost learning for the school year which could add up to 2 ½ years from Prep – Year 12.
85% attendance equals 30 days of lost learning per year or 2 years from Prep – Year 12.
90% attendance equals 1 day per fortnight or 20 days per year equalling one year of absence from Prep – Year 12
95% attendance equals 10 days of lost learning and over half a year of lost opportunities from Prep – Year 12.

Parents and Friends Club

Our Parents and Friends Club are a significant part of the school contributing some voluntary energy into our school community and our classrooms. If anyone would like to be the Parent rep for their class please e-mail secretary.caulfield.pfc@gmail.com with their contact details please. An upcoming PFC AGM will be held over coming week, I would really encourage your attendance.

2024 Enrolments

We have begun the school year with 305 students, jumping back over 300 on the back of a strong enrolment of 54 new prep students. We will continue to look to build on this over the coming year. Importantly we have maintained small class sizes for all year levels with the P-2 average class of 20.85 over the 7 classrooms and the Year 3-6 average of 22.71 over their 7 classrooms.

Buildings and Grounds

Following on from our wonderfully successful school fete last year and the broad fundraising efforts led by our PFC throughout 2023, we are locked in to have our synthetic turf replaced over the coming month. This will occur over a 10-day period, with the existing turf ripped up from the 4th March and the new turf laid from the 12th March, the project is set to be complete and ready for our students by the 18th March. This project would not be achievable without our very successful school fete and fundraising. A wonderful achievement led by our school community, I cannot wait to see our students enjoying this.

We are also in the process of finalising our window refurbishment work with a view to having this work completed over the school holiday period.

Kiss and Go Parking

A reminder to families that cars cannot be left unattended if you are using the Kiss and Go drop off and pick up zone on Olive Street. I understand the tendency to think that a quick trip to the office won’t hurt but traffic flow (or lack thereof) and congestion in that area in the morning and afternoon can be dangerous for our students.

Lunch Orders

We will continue to offer lunch orders on Wednesdays in 2024. We will continue to offer this via an outsourced provider Classroom Cuisine. Lunch packs cost between $9.65 - $15.15. These are popular throughout all year levels and can provide families with an alternative to a packed lunch from home.

Assembly

Our Student led assemblies will be delivered on a fortnightly basis beginning this coming Monday morning at 9am. At the end of each school term, an assembly will be held on that afternoon, this will replace the Monday morning assembly that would otherwise be held during that week. All assemblies are opportunities for families to join us and I would welcome your attendance throughout the school year.

2024 Student Free Days

A reminder that the 2024 Student Free Days are as follows:

Day 1 – Mon Jan 29th (Administration and classroom preparations)

Day 2 – Wed 26th June (Parent-Teacher Interviews)

Day 3 – Mon 4th Nov (Responsive Teaching Professional Learning)

Day 4 – Mon 9th Dec (2025 Team Planning)

In addition, the state government provides one professional practice day for teaching staff to utilise throughout the course of the year to ease and manage excess workload. Our school will continue to support the professional capacity and development of our staff to build curriculum and wellbeing experience, leadership knowledge, this will be underpinned by work with the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership with participation in the Leading Literacy professional learning course and our partnership with Growth Coaching International and educational consultant Mandy Dunn who will work with our leaders throughout the year. In addition to this, we continue to partake in the Bilingual School Network and work alongside our Education Improvement Leader (EIL) to refine our approach to teaching mathematics.

Labour Day Public Holiday

Parents are reminded that there is a Labour Day holiday on Monday 11th March. There will be no school on this day. It is anticipated that Team Kids will run a holiday program on that day.

Information Sessions:

Area teams were busy this week producing an information presentation that will be distributed to families throughout the school. This will provide some localised information specific for areas as well as some whole school information. In the event that you have had many children move through our school or you are comfortable with your knowledge of the school and the year ahead you may choose to look over it briefly, alternatively for our early years program and new families to the school, this information package will contain many prompts and answers to questions to assist your child and family throughout the year ahead.

These presentations will be made available via SchoolStream to support our Meet The Teacher afternoon with families on the 12th February (3:40 - 4:40pm). Throughout this year, we will also aim to keep you informed and engaged with our classrooms by hosting open classroom afternoons where you can come in and see your child’s classroom and their work.

Team Kids

We recently had the opportunity to meet our new director of service Nick Som, Nick joined us on Monday and is excited to work with us over the year ahead. He officially begins his role with us on Monday. Team Kids have begun their partnership with us by delivering our holiday program over January. Bookings can be made by visiting their website – teamkids.com.au. Team Kids are kindly hosting our Tea and Tissues morning for our new Prep families next Monday morning. We are looking forward to working with Nick and the team over the year ahead.

Please ensure your child is registered with Team Kids prior to their attendance on the day. Team Kids are unable to accept bookings or attendance at a before or afterschool session if your child is not registered.

Working with Children Checks (WWC)

We encourage and value parental and community support at CPS. There are many ways that parents, grandparents and friends can assist at our school. We encourage all parents to obtain a Working with Children’s Check that will allow you to be very involved in your child’s education. These checks are free for volunteers. Once you have your WWC please come to the office so we can add your name to our list of parents who have a current WWC check.

Staffing

A very warm welcome is extended to our new teachers – Miss Yawen Deng, Miss Tina Pyrcz and (Sayako) Nakagawa sensei. We also welcome back (Aya) Hughes Sensei from leave. Nakagawa sensei is our Performing Arts teacher for Term 1 whilst Okano sensei is on Long Service Leave. With ongoing recruitment challenges within our system, it is so pleasing to have a very high performing, stable and enthusiastic staffing profile for the year ahead. There are currently 617 teaching vacancies advertised throughout the state, many schools are understaffed and this can impact on schools in a myriad of ways. I also welcome Lauren Karas to our education support team and welcome back Surabhi Singh and Payal Sharma from leave taken at the end of 2023. I extend a warm welcome to Georgie Labb who joins us as an experienced speech pathologist. The full list of our 2024 team is identified below.

Communication

The school would like to bring our families along with us on the journey that is the 2024 school year and would like to encourage and promote really positive and valuable partnerships between home and school. We share the email addresses of our teaching teams with the following expectations:

Teachers will reply to your email within 48 hours
If you have any urgent message, please call the office - don't send an email
During the day, teachers are teaching. They have limited time to reply to emails between 8:45am – 4pm

We encourage face to face communication to resolve complex matters
Responses will not be provided over the weekend
Please be respectful and polite in communication staff
Absences are still to be communicated to the office and not with the teacher(s)
Every child spends time with their co-teachers, so please include both teachers in your email
Our staff work flexibly. Just as you send an email at a time that works for you, they will send emails at a time that works for them
Communication about a particular issue may be discussed by the whole area team to discuss an appropriate action/response

Prep A: Krystal Ryan - krystal.ryan@education.vic.gov.au

Prep B: Mari Murray (Area Leader) - mari.murray@education.vic.gov.au

Prep C: Sally Curlewis and Rika Klein - sally.curlewis@education.vic.gov.au, rika.klein@education.vic.gov.au

1/2A: Rosemary Watts - rosemary.watts@education.vic.gov.au

1/2B: Noriko Kurata (Area Leader) - Noriko.kurata@education.vic.gov.au

1/2C: Yawen Deng – yawen.deng@education.vic.gov.au

1/2D: Ayaka Mori - Ayaka.mori@education.vic.gov.au

3/4A: Carolina Guzman - Carolina.GuzmanRamirez@education.vic.gov.au

3/4B: Takako Morita - Takako.morita@education.vic.gov.au

3/4C: Tina Pyrcz – tina.pyrcz@education.vic.gov.au

3/4D: Hiroki Kurokawa (Area Leader) - Hiroki.kurokawa@education.vic.gov.au

5/6A: Kylie Newman (Area Leader) - kylie.newman@education.vic.gov.au

5/6B: Asami Onda - Asami.onda@education.vic.gov.au

5/6C: Aya Hughes and Annika McCann - Annika.mccann@education.vic.gov.au, Ayako.Hughes@education.vic.gov.au

Visual Art: Miho Suzuki-Bevan - Miho.Suzuki-Bevan@education.vic.gov.au

Performing Arts: Miho Okano/Ms Sayako Nakagawa - Sayako.Nakagawa@education.vic.gov.au

Phys Ed: Niamh Molloy - Niamh.Molloy@education.vic.gov.au

STEM: Jenny Parkes - Jennifer.Parkes@education.vic.gov.au

Tutor: Jaime Lowy - Jaime.Lowy@education.vic.gov.au

Office Manager: Jess Walmsley - caulfield.ps@education.vic.gov.au

Business Manager: Therese Meiers - caulfield.ps@education.vic.gov.au

Assistant Principal: Miharu Morioka - Miharu.morioka@education.vic.gov.au

Principal: Edward Strain – Edward.strain@education.vic.gov.au

Wellbeing: Caroline Robertshaw

Japanese Assistant: Miki Takebayashi

Japanese Assistant: Tomomi Coster

Education Support: Surabhi Singh

Education Support: Azka Inayah

Education Support: Lauren Karas

Education Support: Payal Sharma

Speech Pathologist: Georgie Labb

Annual Privacy Reminder

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy.

Please take time to read our school’s collection notice, found on our website.

We ask parents to also review the guidance we provide on how we use Google Workspace for Education safely at the school and what parents can do to further protect their child’s information. If after reviewing the guidance, you have any questions or concerns regarding your child using Google Workspace for Education, please contact the school. For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents. This information is also available in ten community languages:

Accident Insurance

The Department of Education and Training (DET) does not provide personal accident insurance for students. Parents are generally responsible for paying the cost of medical treatment for injured students, including any transport costs. The Department of Education states that reasonable low-cost accident insurance policies are available from the commercial insurance sector. Similarly, DET (which includes the school) does not offer replacement of personal items which are brought to school and are lost, broken or stolen. Sentimental or expensive belongings and toys, including sports equipment and electronic devices, are normally best left at home.

Mobile phones

Most returning families would be aware of the introduction of the state-wide policy on Mobile Phones in Victorian Government Schools. All students are required to turn off and hand in mobile phones to prevent usage during school hours. Devices will be placed in the a locked cabinet/cupboard at the start of the day and handed back at the end of the day. School Council has approved our Mobile Phone policy to ensure it is aligned to DET directives. A copy of this policy is available on our website. Please discuss this with your child/ren to assist us in following this policy. We thank you for your support in this area.

Birthday Sharing:

Birthdays are a big deal for every child and we would like to assist your family to celebrate this important milestone and share in their special day. Unfortunately, we are unable to share food or party bags that contain food, toys or treats. We please ask that you don’t provide food or class gifts to celebrate a birthday as we are unable to distribute this in our classrooms.

Hats:

A reminder that hats must be worn from 1st September to the 30th April. Sunscreen and sunglasses are also highly recommended. The school will provide a spare hat for a child to support their engagement in outside teaching and learning opportunities. No spare hats are provided for recess and lunch breaks, students without a hat will be asked to remain in the shade which may impact on their usual choice of play and activities. Hats can be purchased from the office.

DigiMaker Class:

Digimaker coding classes will once again run this year, having begun yesterday, these will be delivered in our STEM classroom, please ensure your child is either promptly collected at the conclusion of their class or is booked into Team Kids for further supervision beyond the completion of their class. For further interest in the Digimaker class, you can visit their website.

Looking Ahead:

It’s a real privilege to lead such a wonderful school and we are looking forward to supporting all our students in their learning and development in 2024. I really love my job and I feel incredibly fortunate to work with such talented and dedicated students and staff. I invite parents and carers to seek help if you have concerns for your child’s learning and development. You can make contact by calling or emailing Miharu or myself. As your school leadership team, we are here to help everyone in our school community. We pride ourselves on making sure that we lead Caulfield Primary School in a way that is fair, supportive and welcoming.

Welcome back and enjoy a great weekend.

Edward Strain

Principal