Head of Campus

Dear Families

Welcome back to what has been a chilly start to Term 3. 

At the beginning of the term all staff gathered at 2 different locations to engage in professional learning. At the Our Lady of La Vang site our Education Support Officers worked with our Allied Health Team to learn more about Neurodiversity affirming practices. Behaviour for learning and Sensory Processing and regulation. The teaching staff met at the Catholic education Office to and engaged in professional learning around the Keeping Safe: Child Protection Curriculum, reinforcing our shared responsibility to support the safety, wellbeing and rights of every child and young person. This curriculum is core to ensuring we can empower students with the knowledge, skills and confidence to recognise unsafe situations, build respectful relationships, seek help when needed, and understand that they have the right to feel safe at all times. Through ongoing professional learning, we ensure that our practice remains current, responsive and focused on helping children develop the protective behaviours they need throughout their lives.

This term we will be having our Personalised Plan for Learning  (PPL) meetings which provide a valuable opportunity to bring teachers and families together to discuss student’s strengths, goals, adjustments and learning goals. While many conversations occur throughout the year; over the phone, via email or at the gate, nothing replaces the value of the face-to-face collaboration that these meetings provide. 

The student’s PPL’s, meeting notes and documented adjustments form an important part of the evidence we are required to collect for the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on students with disability (NCCD), which helps schools and governments better understand the support needs of our students. The NCCD also informs disability related funding that helps us provide targeted resources, specialised supports and meaningful learning opportunities. 

Regular school attendance is vital for student learning, engagement and wellbeing. In our setting we acknowledge this is not always possible due to external therapy, family circumstances and ongoing complex health needs. School funding is based on students attending on a full-time basis and if there is a regular pattern of absence, we are required to record this. In the coming weeks I will be identifying students who have regular patterns of days or blocks of time away and will ask for an ED175 Exemption from Attending School form which will greatly assist us to meet our reporting obligations. 

Please don’t hesitate to contact me to discuss any matters and my door is open, so you are welcome to come in.

I  look forward to seeing you during our PPL meeting week. 

Kind regards

Cathy