Principal
Aaron Cox
Principal
Dear parents, carers and staff,
It is with great relief we say goodbye and good riddance to 2021. It was a year of many ups and downs but we look forward to 2022 where we hope to get some wind in our sails as we move on from the past two years. Despite all the craziness of 2021, Kingswood Primary School experienced many, many successes. These included very good reading results in NAPLAN; an agile response to remote learning that supported most of our community needs; the development, and implementation of our successful tutoring program that produced significant results including reducing our students who demonstrated low growth during 2020. We managed to reduce this from 55% to less than 5 % due to this targeted initiative.
Additionally, there were numerous promotions of our staff within the state education system, including 2 principals, 3 assistant principals, 2 acting assistant principals, 4 learning specialists, and 1 acting learning specialist. This is a testament to the enormous quality of our staff here at Kingswood. I am proud of every single one of those individuals. We also saw significant growth in our supports for children with various needs, led by Megan Franklyn and Katrina Sargent. Although this is not the end of our successes, we certainly had a lot to celebrate considering the roadblocks put in front of us.
As the year ends, we sadly say goodbye to the following teachers, Ms Erin Hamilton, Ms Jenna Herbert, Ms Bronny Lake, Ms Alex Baxter, Ms Kelly Young, Ms Ilisa Cooper, Ms Natalie Selisher (12 months leave). Other staff on leave who have resigned throughout the year include Ms Bree Morgan, Ms Sarah Rohan, Ms Linsey Pagiou and Ms Stef Rossiter (transfer beginning 2022), and finally Kelly Suttie, Michelle Hare, Di Woodhouse, Kate Dunstan, and Liz Scott who are part of the Education Support team. We wish them all well in their new endeavours where ever they are around Australia.
With the departure of some teaching staff, we see the arrival of Ms Stephanie Egan, Melissa French, Ms Cynthia Khew, Mithuna Chaeyras (EAL), Natalie Potenzi (Tutor), Mr Josh Velez (Learning Specialist) and Ms Julia Clemente will return from Term 3. New Education Support staff members include Greg Cornell, Bianca Borsi, Gemma Holmes, and in 2022 Erica Lai, and Amy Burnett (First Aid) will join our team.
I can’t express my gratitude enough to our families for going above and beyond throughout the year to support our children. Your devotion to your children is second to none. I literally have no idea how you did it holding down jobs and supporting your child’s learning, all at the same time. Thank you also to all parents who took the time to reach out to me directly with feedback. Some gave us areas to reflect on, consider changes or improvements, whilst others just wanted to express their gratitude. Regardless of the feedback's purpose it was all very much appreciated.
To my staff (teachers, ES, Inclusion), I say you are the best! Clearly demonstrating that they are lifelong learners, adaptable to new situations, but most importantly not losing focus on the reason we do what we do, the academic, social, and emotional education of our children. You all literally breathe our number one core value ‘we are here for the students’. Our school Improvement Team and middle leaders are fantastic groups of professionals that work tirelessly to drive school improvement. Finally, my job would be impossible without the amazing support of Megan Franklyn and Sharon Lomas. They respectively do an amazing job leading the school in wellbeing and curriculum.
Kingswood Primary School is extremely lucky to have all these dedicated and professional people working on our core moral purpose.
In closing, I implore all to take this longer than usual summer break to unwind, be grateful for the things we have, celebrate the successes your family experienced in 2021, leave the negativity of social media, and those that create it, in the dust where it belongs and make plans no matter how big or small to embrace the things that matter to your happiness. I look forward to seeing everyone refreshed at the beginning of the school year on Monday 31st January. Until then, stay safe and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.