Principal's Report 

Dear SEPS Families, 

Congratulations to our brilliant Parent Band “Carpool Tunnel Syndrome’ who represented Sandy East PS and amazed everyone with their talent at the Bayside Battle of the Bands last Friday night. While they did not take out the winning spot, they did us proud and from all accounts were tough contenders! 

We have received complaints from our neighbours in Miller St regarding school drop off and pick up. Our families are blocking driveways and street access by pulling up in the middle of the street to let students in and out of cars. Please be mindful that when we hear from our neighbours, there is usually a follow up with parking inspectors booking drivers in surrounding streets. We quite often witness near misses due to impatient drivers. Aside from the cost of a fine, we ask that every one considers the safety of all members in our community. 

Please also note that parents/carers from SEPS are not permitted to enter the circular driveway on Hollway Rd at any time. This driveway belongs to Sandy College. The college have requested several times that our families do not enter this zone. It is not a drop off zone nor a parking space for our school. Again, this is to ensure the safety of the Sandy College community. 

This week launches the beginning of our School Review process. The school review happens every four years. It is an opportunity for us to reflect on the progress we have made in achieving the goals set in the School Strategic Plan. Our review is scheduled for Term 1, 2027 and this is where we have an external reviewer and challenge partners work with us to develop the strategic plan for the next four years. We work closely with the School Council during this time and there will be many opportunities for parent, student and teacher input during the process. We begin working on the Departments Compliance audits this week. This is a huge amount of work so I would like to thank the leadership team and our office staff for all their time and effort in ensuring that we have all our documentation in place.  We will keep you updated throughout this process. 

An important way for our community to have input into our strategic planning is through the department’s surveys. We use this data to identify our strengths and set goals based on areas that we need to improve. The AToSS data is the Student Attitudes to school survey data for Years 4-6. Our key improvement strategies for our Annual Implementation Plan this year, centred around student feedback based on learner agency and engagement. Our preliminary review of the data is very exciting. We were very pleased to see huge gains across most areas of the survey. We look forward to presenting this data to you in coming newsletters. The parent opinion survey will be opening later this term. We really hope all our families take 10 minutes to complete the survey so that every parent and carer is represented in the data. We really do use this information to make our school the best it can be. 

Wishing everyone a great fortnight ahead. 

Jane Briffa