Principal's Desk

Message from the Minister for Education

Below is a pre-recorded short video message that speaks to parents and carers about the importance of the second school term for learning, from The Hon. Ben Carroll MP, Deputy Premier, Minister for Education. 

Student Reporting

Last term there was an opportunity for our families to share their view regarding our previous student reports. Firstly, thank you to all the families who took the time in providing us with this valuable information. With this information and working with our staff, we have made changes to the reporting format in effort to increase the level of understanding of your child as a learner.

These 'new' inclusions are:

• Introduction of our five school values, Respect, Resilience, Positivity, High Expectations and Integrity as part of our Work Habits.
• Individualised comment boxes specific to your child on their achievement in Literacy (covering aspects of Literacy; Readining, Writing, and Speaking and Listening) and Numeracy (covering Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability).
• Individualised comment boxes specific to your child on their future learning goals in Literacy (covering aspects of Literacy; Readining, Writing, and Speaking and Listening) and Numeracy (covering Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability).
• Personalised strategies in which will be implemented to support your child's area for future growth in both Literacy and Numeracy.
• Increased Specialists assessment tasks from two tasks to four tasks.

As you can see, this is a significant change and one, based on the feedback from our community, will be a welcomed change. We will still continue to have an individualised comment and with the removal of our previous checklists, we hope these new inclusions will provide you with a more personalised understanding of your child's current and future learning.

Choosing a School for Next Year / 2025 Foundation Enrolments

At this time of the year many people are thinking about choosing a school for next year. This may be parents of children in Year 6 who are deciding on secondary schools or parents of pre-schoolers who are looking for a primary school. 

Choosing the school that is best suited to your family and child’s needs can still be a challenge. The best way to determine the right school for you is to visit them, participate in the school tours and take advantage of the open days/nights and various transition events that the schools offer. 

This approach works equally well for primary and secondary schools.

From the first day of Term 2, we will be accepting enrolments for Foundation in 2025. We encourage prospective parents and carers to complete an online tour via the school website where you can learn about our wonderful school and meet our staff and students. Prospective families can also attend an in-person tour where we can show you our school and answer any questions you might have or discuss your child’s individual needs.

Mrs Chalmers, Mr Garvey and I have been busily providing personalised school tours for interested families, looking to enrol their child at Park Ridge in 2025. Prospective families can book a school tour through our website: https://parkridge-ps.vic.edu.au/ or through the office on 9752 8555.

With a new state-wide enrolment timeline this year, we will be accepting enrolments for Foundation for 2025, and any other year level, from the beginning of this term. Further information about choosing a school and enrolling your child is available at https://www.vic.gov.au/how-choose-school-and-enrol Enrolment information will be available at the office from Term 2.

If you know of anyone who is looking at a Primary School for next year, please encourage them to visit our website and register for the online tour where they will hear teachers, parents and students talk about our school. They are also encouraged to come and visit Park Ridge and see our school ‘in action’ where they will get a sense of the great relationships that exist here. We love showing people around and talking about this outstanding school.

Smart watches and mobile phones in schools

Recently, I was looking for some statistics and I came across a staggering figure around mobile phone ownership within Australia. 

• At the start of 2023 there were 32.71 million mobile connections in Australia

With a population of over 26 million, there are more mobile phone plans than people in Australia. It made me think – some of us have more than one phone! I was intrigued, yet I wondered and curious about what children owned and perhaps what they used them for. I found this -  

• 68% of kids aged from 3 – 17 own a smartphone and collectively use them for almost a whole day each week (21 hours and 48 minutes)
• Usage is spread across shooting video, taking photos and playing games
• The average age kids are getting a phone is 12
• 10-year old’s are on their phone almost 15 hours a week and this increases to 26+ by the time they hit 17.

Last week, I attended an Open Night for my daughter's future secondary school. As a curious onlooker, I listened to the Year 7 Coordinator who spoke about how they deal with technology. She kindly shared with me the processes and consequences around their use (actually, what happens when you get caught with one in your hand!) and I was impressed. Pretty tough and no room for arguments. However, what are the rules for Government primary schools and us?

In case you didn’t know, The Department of Education has robust, distinct rules and regulations around phones in schools and technology. 

• Students who choose to bring mobile phones to school must have them switched off and securely stored during school hours.  At Park Ridge mobile phones must be signed in at the office each morning and signed out at the end of the school day.
• Schools are required to develop a local policy on students using mobile phones, which must include how this ministerial policy will be implemented.

Regarding other devices, the Department states – 

• Wearable devices, iPads and other personal devices are excluded from the policy, however, if they are brought to school, students must switch off all notifications during the school day. Schools may choose to include wearable devices, iPads and other personal devices as part of their local policies.

Due to a range of privacy issues, under no circumstance should a child be called by a parent on one of these devices. The watch should be on silent (school mode etc) and notifications turned off. Any mobile phone not handed in comes with the risk of ‘Enforcement’ within the guidelines of the Department of Education. 

I wonder now, as I welcome students each morning while on duty, how connected children are and how many mobile phones our students own! 

For more information, please see the Departments webpage here.

Child Safe Standards

Our School Council Education Sub-Committee regularly review and update our school policies that fall under the umbrella of the Child Safe Standards. In 2024, we will be discussing and reviewing the Child Safe Standards, with the aim to continue to improve how we address each standard and improve the structures and processes we have in place to help keep our students safe from harm.

Over the coming Term, we will be sharing an overview of each of the Child Safe Standards in the newsletter to help build community awareness of the standards and to seek feedback around how the standards are addressed at Park Ridge. 

A vital component of reviewing and updating school policies is parent/carer involvement and feedback. Whilst there are several avenues for this, the most effective way is to attend a Education Sub-Committee meeting.  If you would like to join the Education Subcommittee or attend our next meeting, please contact the office on 9752 8555 or park.ridge.ps@education.vic.gov.au 

If you have any concerns about Child Safety, please speak with a member of our school leadership team. 

Thank you for your contributions

On behalf of School Council and the Finance Committee, we would like to extend a big thank you to our parents and carers for their parent payments and voluntary contributions. 

Parent contributions are vital to support the continuation and development of our teaching and learning programs and resources for our students. 

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Please feel free to pop in for a chat with either Carrie, Brendan or I, should you wish to discuss anything. 

Take care,

Mr. Dale Blythman