Principal News

Breaking News

We will be having a very special visitor this year. A very expensive visitor. 

The Melbourne Cup will be coming to our school so that our children can learn about the stories of why we have a day off for a horse race, but also learn about that it epitomizes the ability to dream big. Thats what we want our students to do and what many of our families have done coming to Australia.

More information and dates to come, but we are one of only a couple of schools where the students can get close to such a famous trophy, as it travels the world before reaching Flemington in November. 

Student Highlight

Many people will have seen the famous clips of athletes in Olympics going to help other athletes. Yesterday, one of our talented athletes sacrificed his own race in the district cross country to assist another student who had fallen over. When I heard this had happened, I was immensely proud, but also not surprised. Shadrack in Year 5 was the person who helped, and he does this every single play. Today, he quietly mentioned to a young student, that's not how we play. This talented, quite tall Grade 5 has such a beautiful heart and his influence on the group is enormous. Congratulations Shadrack for being you and showing that talent is important, but compassion and empathy are like Gold. A big congratulations to Kobee who also represented the school well, in this challenging event, even qualifying for the level yesterday is a high achievement. 

Focus On Choices

Overwhelmingly, our kids are great, and visitors comment on how calm the school is. Our trends at the moment is that some junior students are making poor choices with their play. We are working hard with them at the moment to ensure that they can work within boundaries and use pro-social behaviours. One promise I will never make is that there will never be problems at school. There will always be! I will promise that we will follow up, listen and always advocate for every child. 

We are working with young children still developing their impulse control and pro-social skills. However, that is the key. These are generally skills that need to be taught. They take time, and they need constant reinforcing and feedback. They need to learn these are often choices which can be made differently. Remember, a child is not bad, the choice they make can be a poor choice. Most issues occur out of getting 'play' wrong, but the intention is generally to play. One issue is we also ask from kids what they are not developmentally ready for. Dr Billy spoke of this at our school recently, and the answer is to drop the demand and increase the support. This is not the same as permissiveness, or dropping high expectations, to the contary, we always have high expectations for our students but we are part of the solution to get them there. Drop the demand refers to doing it in a small group first, having an adult supporting at the start. 

So how are we increasing support? We are increasing the number of education support staff outside to guide and support students to make better choices in the moment. 

We are capturing more data to analyse where incidents may occur. 

Most importantly, we welcome you, to come and talk with and advocate for your child. I have had some great conversations with parents in the past week, and when we work together, great outcomes for all are achieved. 

Please always feel free to email me principal@hfdoveton.catholic.edu.au, or come and make a time to see myself, or even better, your child's teacher to let us know what they are saying and feeling. Please, make a time however, before school as students arrive is not the best time as the teacher needs to assist the students into their routines. 

Progressive Achievement Testing

Over the next two weeks we will conduct assessments in Maths and Reading with all students to track how they are going. If you would like specific feedback about this, feel free to make a time with a teacher to discuss. These are great snapshot assessments which identify next steps for students. 

Enrol For 2026

Our school enrolments for 2026 are filling for Prep. If you have someone you know, or your own child wanting to enrol, please let them know. We filled our Prep class this year, and it is likely that this class will be filled early than before. We will be capping students as we will have limited classrooms due to refurbishment works. We have a school tour this Tuesday 9am. I encourage and invite any existing family to come for a tour as well, see the school in action! 

Welcome

We welcome three new staff members. Sherlyn Antony, a previous St John's Student leader has joined us two days a week working with new arrival students. Jackie Tun will be working with us four days a week in education support. Finally, last year we put a call out to parents interested in work, two people were employed and a third expressed interest once her child had grown a bit, but it is wonderful to welcome Linda Rusi to our office team every Friday. She replaced Jerome Giacotto, who had taken on the role, but it was wonderful for her that it led to a full time role at another school. 

Pentecost

Sunday week we celebrate Pentecost in the Church. Pentecost is often referred to as the birthday of the Church, where Jesus spoke to the apostles and they encountered the Holy Spirit, going out to proclaim to all nations the Good News. Well it worked, because the Catholic Church remains a religion practiced in all corners of the Earth, and we want to celebrate that we are representative of that, people of many nations coming to learn about Jesus. Even those non Catholic families who still make the choice to come and learn about Jesus, all are included, respected and welcomed. So we won't bake bread, but we will bake biscuits next Thursday, and we encourage all families to come and share biscuits from around the world. It will be around our World Map Thursday afternoon. More details in the newsletter.