Principal's Update
At Dundas Public School we do our best always
Staffing News
A huge congratulations to Mrs Zalaf who was successful in being appointed to the newly created Assistant Principal, Curriculum and Instruction (APC&I) role starting in 2023. Literacy and numeracy skills are the key to success across all curriculum in our schools. To ensure all children and young people have a strong foundation in literacy and numeracy, deep content knowledge and confidence in their ability to learn, adapt and be responsible citizens, the department is introducing over 1,300 Assistant Principal, Curriculum and Instruction roles over the next three years.Assistant Principals, Curriculum and Instruction is an off-class role and will support strong instructional leadership models in all schools, coordinating professional learning for teachers, monitoring student outcomes, and supporting families to be key partners in student learning.
Thank you to Shayne Chapman-Fong and Jenny Lee for representing the DPS parent community on the recruitment panel. Thank you to Mr Yee for representing the DPS staff.
Term 4 COVID operations
I want to provide you with an update on our COVID-smart settings, particularly with the latest change to isolation requirements and what this will mean for our school. Please review the following information and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have further questions.
On 30 September, National Cabinet announced that from Friday 14 October 2022, people who test positive to COVID-19 do not need to isolate. In line with this announcement, the NSW Department of Education have worked with NSW Health to support all schools to adapt to this change while continuing to prioritise student and staff wellbeing by minimising the risk of COVID-19 transmissions.
Students and staff should continue to stay home when sick.
We will continue to send home students or staff displaying symptoms.
Anyone who believes they have been exposed to COVID-19 is strongly recommended to monitor for symptoms and test if they have any concerns, as well as wear a mask. We will continue to support our families to use rapid antigen tests (RATs) if symptomatic or if you believe you have been exposed to COVID-19. RAT testing may help identify the infection early and is important if you are in contact with people at greater risk of serious illness if exposed to COVID-19.
We are continuing our COVID-smart measures
Our school will continue to operate with our baseline COVID-smart measures in place throughout Term 4 to minimise transmission and keep our school open. This includes a combination of layered safety measures such as maintaining hygiene and cleaning practices, using rapid antigen testing (RAT) when experiencing symptoms, maximising natural ventilation, strongly encouraged vaccinations and strongly encouraging mask-wearing particularly when indoors and/or physical distancing is not possible.
In certain circumstances, NSW Health and the Department of Education may advise that additional COVID-smart measures be temporarily reintroduced at our school. We will provide further details of any changes to COVID-smart measures at our school, if/when required.
Reporting requirements from 14 October
Please continue to notify your school if your child tests positive to COVID-19 as we will continue to notify the school community of any known positive cases to prioritise student and staff safety and wellbeing.
Term 4 school events
To assist our families stay informed with Term 4 school events, we have updated the events page on our school website. More events will be added as they are organised.
When you visit the page, you will need to click on ‘More events’ to see all organised school events. A link to the events page is below.
https://dundas-p.schools.nsw.gov.au/events.html
Student absences from school
This term, Dundas Public school is using an SMS communication platform if a student is absent from school. A lot of schools have implemented the SMS system with much success and the feedback has been very positive.
Some key features and benefits include:
✔ Messaging is a semi-automated daily text message, personalised for parents with children absent from school.
✔ Reduce parent ‘notice fatigue’ by targeting messages to relevant groups and individuals. DPS will send home fewer attendance letters during the term as most absences will be explained via the SMS service.
✔ Two-way text messaging allows parents to provide absence justification straight away
Check In Assessments for Years 3, 4 and 5
Students in Years 3,4 and 5 are participating in the Check-in assessment. The assessments will be completed by the end of week 4 (Friday, 4th November). All students complete a reading assessment and a numeracy assessment.
Students are asked to bring headphones that plug into a computer to enable them to hear audio during the assessment.
2023 Planning (reminder from previous newsletter)
In order to assist with planning for 2023, we will be sending out a form next week to each family requesting information on students returning to Dundas Public School next year. This will help us with a great deal, especially when it comes to staffing.
Lost property (reminder from previous newsletter)
There is currently a large amount of lost property, particularly school jackets. If your child has lost an item of their uniform or a lunch box, please remind them to look for it at lost property.
Please ensure that all your child’s belongings have been labelled so they can be returned. Also, please check that your child has their own belongings and that they have not taken home another child’s hat or jacket.
All lost property not claimed by tomorrow afternoon will be disposed of.
School Bytes (reminder from previous newsletter)
As you are already aware, we have introduced an online platform that we will be using to share permission notes with our families. The platform is called 'School Bytes' and is a quick and efficient method of receiving and processing permission notes.
Families will receive an email with the online permission note. Parents and carers will be able to easily open the email, read the information in the note, give permission and sign the document straight away on any device. Permission notes that require payment will have a link straight to our payment tab on the school website.
As stated previously, our intention is to not send home paper information/permission notes starting this term. Please contact the school is you have recently changed your email address so your contact information can be updated.
** We currently have many outstanding permission notes for upcoming school events. It would be appreciated if parents and carers could please complete the approval process on School Bytes as soon as possible.
2023 Kindergarten enrolments (reminder from previous newsletter)
We are currently accepting enrolments for 2023. Families need to complete an online enrolment form for DPS. General enrolment information can be found on the NSW Department of Education website.
Enrol in a NSW public primary school | Service NSW
Online Enrolment is a web-based system which will allow parents to submit an application to enrol a child in a local intake area in a NSW Government School. The online form can be accessed from the enrolment page on the school's website.
The information once completed by the parent, will be submitted to the school through the Online Enrolment School Interface. Our School Administrative Support Staff are then able to review and edit the enrolment application submitted by the parent/carer and send to the Enrolment and Registration Number (ERN) system.
The NSW Education Department Enrolment Policy has been revised to support schools to manage all enrolment applications, encourage greater consistency in decision-making and make sure the enrolment choices are clear for parents.
The enrolment cap is the number of students that can be enrolled at a school based on the school’s permanent accommodation. The enrolment cap tells us whether the school will be able to accept non-local enrolments. Schools with a local intake area have a cap set by the department.
Within the enrolment cap, a number of enrolment places (the buffer) must be kept aside for the likely number of local students who will need to enrol during the year. For this reason, a school will not take non-local students once they reach their buffer, unless there are exceptional circumstances.
We invite families to visit the school website and select ‘Enrolment’ to start the Kindergarten enrolment process.
A link to the 2023 DPS Kindergarten Transition website is below. It contains lots of information that will be very useful to new DPS families.
2023 DPS Kindergarten Transition website
We will be offering Orientation visits for new Kindy students and their parents/carers in Term 4 which will include classroom visits, school information/tour and the Dundas Expo!
Communication platforms (reminder from previous newsletter)
Kind regards,
Lee Shipley
Principal