Dear parents, carers and friends of EEPS,

The Year 3-6 House Athletics was a great event last Thursday. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend due to a full day Principal Network meeting, but it's always a day that I normally look forward to. Thank you to the students for their supportive and encouraging efforts and to the group of wonderful parent helper volunteers. In other years we have been able to use some Montmorency Secondary College students but this year the event fell in their exam period.

World events and our thoughts

At Assembly, whilst not acknowledging any specific event I did reference that there have been a lot of concerns and unpleasant events happening around the World lately. Speaking to a mixed audience of 5-12 year old's I did remind the student body that whilst there may be unfortunate things or events happening around us, we do have a lot to be thankful for and to appreciate.

As Principal, writing to our parents and carers, I want to extend our thoughts and concerns to those families impacted with the ongoing and increasing conflicts in the Middle East, and other parts of the world. We live in a globally connected world and the connections between many families and friendship groups can reach to all continents and corners of the world. Our thoughts are with everyone who has connections to conflicts and tensions around the world.

Toilet update

Word did get out that, for the first time in 5 years, I held a special whole school assembly in the Hall last Friday morning. This was in response to the significant concerns that the school had for the complete disrespect that the toilets were being treated with throughout the school. This wasn’t isolated to one part of the school, nor is a unique EEPS problem. I did start my presentation with highlighting some of the long list of activities and events that I could happily score ourselves a 10 out of 10 on. Needless to say we have a long way to go to score the use of the facilities as a 10 out 10. However, I am hopeful that we have already started to make some progress there. Please continue to reinforce the message around the respectful use of toilet facilities- thank you.

Community feed back

I did write last week about more examples of small actions that provide hope and optimism. I did follow-up this theme in assembly on Monday, as I mentioned. What I forgot to mention was a lovely email from a local resident, which I have included here:

“I wanted to let you know that you have some wonderful little kids at your school. A little boy in grade 5…who lives at the end of our street and his little buddies knocked on our door tonight as they had walked past and noticed a package had been delivered to us but left on the street. These good boys carried the box up to our front door to give it to us. What lovely boys and what a wonderful job you and their families are doing in raising kiddies like this.”

We also had some lovely feedback from two parents last week complimenting the school on how we had supported and accommodated their child during the Year 3-6 House athletics day last Thursday. The feedback was also around how supportive and wonderful all the other students had been as well. So, well done everyone!

Competitions

From time to time there are external competitions that may benefit the students. Please always keep an eye out for competitions that may enhance the school. Thank you to one of our Year 2 parents who has entered us in the Andy Lee, ‘Do not open’ competition! Fingers crossed, I am sure many students would love to have Andy visit.

Prep Museum

On Monday afternoon I had the great pleasure in officially opening the 2025 Prep Museum full of wonderful artifacts! This is a special, annual tradition at EEPS following on from the Melbourne Museum excursion earlier in the term. Thank you to all the contributions from home and for the Year 5 buddies for helping out. Hopefully parents can have a chance to visit before or after school over the next couple of days.

Occupational Health and Safety Audit

On Tuesday this week EEPS had their scheduled OHS audit with both internal and external DE personnel. We always do take OHS, in its many forms, seriously so we have been preparing and planning for this event for a while. Whilst we will need to await the final report, they certainly were impressed with our preparations. I would like to thank Chris Hill for her extensive preparations, assisted by Garry Wynne, Melissa McCarthy and Josie Anzelmi.

Core

Our social and emotional learning program at EEPS is called ‘Core’. The main components of a balanced SEL program are around these themes:

-Personal learning

-Social learning

-Emotional learning

-Body safety education

-Positive coping

Every week the teaching teams plan and teach at least one lesson around ones of these themes. We use the government’s Respectful Relationship curriculum as well as resources from The Resilience Project and other sources. An important, and planned, adjunct, to these lessons are the year level incursions. A couple of weeks ago we had the U R Strong workshops, that I mentioned. This week the school has also hosted the Reach Foundation to help facilitate confidence workshops for our Year 5 and 6. We have also hosted the Interrelate Health and Relationships sessions as well.

It is a long term, but we are getting through it together.

Thank you for your positive, genuine and enthusiastic support.

Kind regards

Warren Lloyd

Principal

ICAS