Principal

NAPLAN 2025

This week, Years 5, 7 and 9 at SPC will do their NAPLAN assessments.

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a literacy and numeracy assessment that students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sit each year. It is the only national assessment all Australian students have the opportunity to undertake. 

As students progress through their school years, it is important to check how well they are learning the essential skills of reading, writing and numeracy. NAPLAN assesses the literacy and numeracy skills that students are learning through the school curriculum and allows parents/carers to see how their child is progressing against national proficiency standards. 

NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process. It does not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance, but it can provide teachers with more information about students’ educational progress. 

NAPLAN also provides schools, education authorities and governments with information about how education programs are working, and whether young Australians are achieving important educational outcomes in literacy and numeracy. 

Your son will do the NAPLAN tests online

Online NAPLAN tests are designed to provide precise results and are engaging for students. The tests are tailored (or adaptive), which means that each test presents questions that may be more or less difficult depending on a student’s responses. This helps students remain engaged with the assessment. 

Tailored testing allows a wider range of student abilities to be assessed and measures student achievement more precisely. A student’s overall NAPLAN result is based on both the number and complexity of questions they answer correctly. Your child should not be concerned if they find questions challenging; they may be taking a more complex test pathway. 

Parents/carers can view past test papers and answers here.

Learnings from the recent National EREA Conference in Brisbane

Last week, I spent two days in Brisbane with all the other Principals of mainstream and flexible schools across Australia. It was truly food for the soul when taking time out to reflect on our ministry of education in the Edmund Rice tradition.

I was fortunate to hear from Father Gregory Doyle sj, in a live cross from Los Angeles, who has dedicated his life to his ministry in the poorest neighbourhoods of LA with the problem of gang violence and abject poverty. His message was simple – have boundless compassion. 

Father Greg Boyle had a specific message for our gathering, all of whom work with young people.

“If you go to the margins to fix or rescue or save then it’s about you and you will burn out.  If you go to the margins to connect, you will be eternally replenished because my joy is your joy and your joy is my joy,” said Father Boyle.

Father Boyle shares many of the same values as Edmund Rice: humility, simplicity and the belief that each person should be treated with dignity and respect. His words emphasise how each one of us can make a difference by simply listening and loving.

For me, Father Gregory Boyle exemplifies the transformative power of faith and unconditional love through his gang intervention work in East Los Angeles.  Father Boyle inspires me as he urges us that kinship is what God presses us on to do. 

“Soon we imagine, with God, this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be raised.  We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied.  We locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless.  At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out.  We stand with the demonised so that the demonising will stop.  We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.” 

It is an ongoing challenge for us at SPC and I will be working to share this message about radical kinship with our boys and that they reflect on this as they undertake their mandatory service learning.

Parents and Friends Meeting and Forum

The first P & F meeting and forum of the year is on next week, 18 March 2025 at 7:00pm in the Robson Auditorium.

In the Forum, Mr Byrne and I will be presenting on:

• HSC Results in 2024

• Shining the St Patrick’s Way behaviour curriculum.

Please register your attendance here: Parents and Friends Meeting and Forum.

If you have any items you wish to discuss in the meeting, please advise via this link. We will not be discussing any issues from the floor. It is unreasonable to keep a meeting going long into the evening to discuss issues that do not involve the entire school but are issues for your son only and are better raised with his Year Coordinator.

Blue Black and Gold Dinner

Finally, we are thrilled to announce that BBG tickets will be released on Friday, 14 March. Be sure to save the date—23 May—for what promises to be an incredible BBG event!  Start organising your tables.  If you do not know who to sit with, we will do it for you, so be sure to let us know your son's year group when purchasing tickets.

Special Mass on the Feast of St Joseph

Even though the Class of 2023 made a large donation towards the Breen Oval scoreboard, a few of the alumni have purchased a small statue of St Joseph for the Chapel. It will be blessed and installed next Wednesday 19 March following a Mass in the Chapel. All are welcome.

• College Chapel

• 8:10 AM – 8: 40 AM

• Presided by Bishop Danny Meagher

• Light refreshments to follow for Old Boys, parents/carers and guests in the Scientia Plaza.

The Class of 2024 has also commissioned a life size statue of St Joseph for installation in a garden area adjacent to the Coghlan Building, on the Breen Oval level. It is likely to be installed on this Feast Day in 2026.

Staff News

• This Friday, we farewell Mr Nicholas Phillipson, Head of Visual Arts. A long-standing, cherished member of staff, Mr Phillipson has worked in a number of promotional positions across the College, a testament to his skills as an educator. We wish him well in his new school.

   

• Mr Anthony Porra has been appointed the Interim Head of Visual Arts, and this will be in effect for the rest of this academic year. The College will recruit for the substantive position later in Term 3. I thank Mr Porra for generously taking on this challenge.

In Memoriam

Please keep in your prayers:

• Harry Nash (Year 7) who has recently suffered the loss of his beloved grandfather, Richard Nash. 

   

• Mr Domenico Baliva (Maintenance Officer) following the recent passing of his beloved mother. 

Dr Vittoria Lavorato

Principal

SPC boys can do anything! 

**except divide by zero