Principal Message

Be Kind, Be safe, Be respectful, Be responsible, Be resilient, Be ready

Dear Parents and Carers,

This week, the students in Yr 3 and Yr 5 participated in the NAPLAN testing. This can be extremely daunting for some students, and it could be a hard week for them.

NAPLAN is designed to assess specific skills in literacy and numeracy to provide a snapshot of how students are performing. It’s not a comprehensive measure of a child’s abilities or potential, just one tool in understanding educational progress.

Children have diverse talents that go beyond what’s tested in NAPLAN. Creativity, problem-solving, interpersonal skills, and curiosity are equally important and might not show up in those scores.

Schools, teachers, and parents look at a range of indicators to support a child’s learning, such as classroom performance, effort, participation, and growth over time.

While NAPLAN can help identify areas that might need improvement, it’s not the be-all and end-all of their child’s academic journey. Success comes in many forms, and not all of them are measured by tests.

You might compare NAPLAN to a health check-up—it’s helpful to know how things are going, but it’s only a small part of a bigger picture.

We have also started preparing the students for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. All students will learn about the sacrament, and the catholic students will make their first reconciliation on the 1st of April.

During this preparation, we remind the students that God loves us no matter what, even when we make mistakes. Reconciliation is a special way for us to show we’re sorry for the wrong things we’ve done and to feel God’s love and forgiveness.

We compare it to how we say sorry to our friends or family when we hurt them. When we make mistakes, it’s like we put a little crack in our friendship with God, and saying sorry through Reconciliation helps fix that crack.

Just like practicing for a sport or learning something new brings us closer to being better at it, Reconciliation helps us grow closer to God and be the best version of ourselves.

This sacrament lets us start over whenever we’ve done something wrong, with a clean slate and the chance to keep trying.

Please pray for our students as they prepare for their first Reconciliation.

Keep Smiling

Cathy