From The Principals

What a wild and windy few days we have had this week! Typically, Melbourne waited until 3:31pm to unleash a ferocious storm on Tuesday afternoon, resulting in some minor damage to the school and a loss of power (and a lot of wet staff and students!) Fortunately, power was restored early Wednesday morning for us, but we understand that there may be members of our school community who are still without power or reliable phone reception. Please reach out to the school if we can support you in any way. A huge thank you to the staff and parents who helped people cross roads safely, make it to their cars offered to drive people home who would otherwise be walking. It was great to see the community coming together to support each other. 

Annual privacy reminder to school community

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

Our Photographing, Filming and Recording Students Policy (available here) describes how we collect and use photographs, video and recordings of students. The policy also explains when parent consent is required and how it can be provided and withdrawn. We ask parents to also review the guidance we provide on how we use Microsoft 365 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 Microsoft 365, 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:

* Amharic

* Arabic

* Dari

* Gujarati

* Mandarin

* Somali

* Sudanese

* Turkish

* Urdu

* Vietnamese

Parents in School Grounds

We are so fortunate to have an active and interested parent body here at VPS. We love parents being part of the learning journey for their child/children, and working together with teachers to ensure a positive learning experience. It is normal for all children from time to time to experience some difficulty going into the classroom, especially in the early years of school. If your child is showing signs of this, we encourage you to speak with the teacher to work out a plan and to try and uncover the reasons why they may be experiencing some school refusal. 

Although the urge to stay close to the room to ensure your child transitions into the classroom smoothly can be strong, often, if a child can see their parent close by, they can remain unsettled for longer. Almost all of the time, once children are in the classroom, they are quickly engaged in whatever activity is happening. A cheery goodbye with a hug, the promise they will have a great day and then handing over to the teachers is often the best course of action. As parents, although it can be hard to hand over the care of your most precious cargo to someone else, we encourage you to trust the teachers to do what they are experts at. As a school, we want nothing but the best for your child, and we can assure you that we will let you know if there are issues or concerns. 

We also take the opportunity to remind parents to contact teachers (via the email function in Compass is best) if you are concerned about anything. Our policy for managing concerns states that we will acknowledge receipt of all concerns raised, and attend to the matter within a reasonable time frame (usually within 2 days, although it is often quicker than that.) Please allow teachers time to gather information and conduct thorough investigations into issues so they can be resolved fairly and amicably. We remind all members of the community that as parents and carers, we need to set positive examples of how to manage our emotions, how to interact with others and how to solve problems in a respectful and productive way. As much as we would all like, from time to time, to fight our children's battles, building resilience and conflict resolution skills is important for young people. Please remember that it is never appropriate to approach another child in the yard to talk about a concern you have regarding their conduct or interaction with your own child. This displays an imbalance of power, and can be extremely confronting for a young person. Likewise, we remind parents that discussing issues with other parents needs to be respectful and courteous. Often, there are a whole myriad of things happening for others that we are unaware of, so leading with empathy and kindness first is key. 

Some resources that my help parents can be found here - School refusal: children & teenagers | Raising Children Network

Colour Run

This year, we are excited to bring back the excitement of the Colour Run. Last year was a tremendous success with the school raising in excess of $26,000! The make the day even more spectacular, we are planning to combine our Harmony Day celebrations and Colour Run. This will give students the opportunity to be part of fun activities and celebrations during the day, and then conclude with our  Whole School Colour Run after lunch. 

The Colour Run is scheduled for Friday 22nd of March. 

Students should have come home this week with an information booklet with how to set up a Fundraising Profile and the kinds of prizes on offer. You can start setting up your Fundraising Profile from the 19th of February by using the link here - www.australianfundraising.com.au. 

School Council elections

We currently are receiving nominations for School Council at the office. Our nomination period was announced on Monday 12th of February, with all nominations needing to be received by Monday 19th of February, no later than 5pm. No late nominations can be accepted, unless we don't receive enough nominations to fill the vacancies, and need to call for nominations again. 

If you are keen to learn more, or have questions about the role of School Council, please feel free to contact the school. If you would like to nominate for School Council, please collect a form from the Office. 

Subway Lunches

We are pleased to advise that our local Subway at Vermont South has now moved to the online platform “Flexischools” for ordering.  Subway deliveries will recommence next Friday, 23rd February.  Information will be sent out on how to register for the Flexischools app. Further information is also available in the Community Noticeboard tab.

NAPLAN Assessment 

The students in Years 3 and 5 will be involved in the NAPLAN assessment this year. If you are unaware of NAPLAN, it involves assessments in literacy and numeracy. It is a National assessment that the students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sit each year. This year, the assessments will be held from the 13th of March through to the 22nd March. Please click on the link below for further information.  Further details will follow closer to the date.