Principal Report 

Grandparents Afternoon and Father’s Day Breakfast Report.

I normally would let these two events slip through to the keeper as they both occurred in August. Considering that I won’t be involved with both events next year and beyond I feel that a recap is warranted. 

I’m not sure of how long our Grandparents Afternoons have been a fixture at Oatlands, but I do know that it is an important event and something that adds to the culture of Oatlands. 

I really enjoy:

• No matter the start time, we always have grandparents arriving an hour or so early.
• Seeing our school leaders pair up and escorting our visitors to their grandchild/children’s classrooms.
• Seeing the joy on the faces of the grandparents and students faces when they meet and then interact with each other.
• I enjoy chatting with our guests and I would also like to mention the amount of time I’ve heard how school was different in their day.

Our other annual event is our annual Father’s Day Breakfast.

This year’s event was our 17th. 

Over the years we have had many great speakers. Like Aussie rules legends: Tom Hafey, David Parkin, Kevin Sheedy and who will ever forget Stan Alves and his advice on fathering. David Swartz, Chris Connolly and Nathan Thompson have also attended. Who will ever forget the year that we had racing car driver Steve Richards booked and we found out that he was caught up and unable to attend on the morning. Luckily at the last-minute ex Oatlands teacher, VFL footballer and at the time one of our dads Ben Robertson stood in to save the day. (Some dads still think that he was one of the best speakers that we have had) We have had cricketers like Simon Helmot, Merv Hughes and Damien Fleming being part of the day. We will never forget our on-line events during the Covid lockdowns where Dave O’Neill and Wayne Schwatz participated.

This year we had the privilege of having Billy Brownless as our guest speaker. Bill spoke very well entertaining us with his footy stories and dad advice. He was extremely friendly and made himself available for a chat and selfie. By the way even though he’s a tall man, I didn’t think that he was as towering as he’s portrayed in the media.

On the day, I had many dads comment on how much they enjoyed Billy’s presentation and having their muffin and cuppa and received many positive comments on the following days.

On a personal note, I have thoroughly enjoyed organising these two events and thank Stuart Daly, Gill Higgins and Wes Holloway who have been the Principals of our school during this period and the support that they have always given. The teaching staff have always made both events memorable and I wish to thank our ES staff for the magnificent job putting the breakfast together.  A heartfelt thankyou to parents and grandparents for supporting the school on both days. Finally, I would like to acknowledge our wonderful students for the way they behave and interact on these days.

Thankyou everyone for making this job a pleasure!

John Armao

Assistant Principal