ST FIDELIS NEWSLETTER

Leadership & Management

Management encompasses the following areas: Organisation, Structures, Resource Management, Staff Wellbeing, and Professional Learning.

Week 1 Term 4

Dear Parents and Carers,

 

Welcome back to Term 4. I hope you all enjoyed a nice break and are ready for another term of flexible learning.  

 

Melbourne Archdiocese of Melbourne (MACS) have officially released the dates for return to onsite learning (see below)  NB: All dates below are subject to health advice.

COVID-19 Update 

Return to School Plan-Metropolitan Melbourne

The Victorian Government has announced a staged return to onsite learning in Term 4, with all students returning onsite by Friday 5 November. From the start of term until the return of all students onsite, schools will operate both onsite and remotely. Remote learning will continue to be delivered to students on the days they are not onsite.

 

Commencing Monday 18th October 

  • Foundation children will attend school on Mondays - Wednesdays
  • Year 1/2 children will attend school on Thursday and Fridays
  • Year 3 - 6 will continue remote learning
  • On-site supervision will continue for all authorised essential workers during this time for all children in year levels not attending onsite school

Commencing Tuesday 26th October

  • Foundation children will attend school on Mondays - Wednesdays
  • Year 1/2 children will attend school on Thursday and Fridays
  • Year 3/4 children will attend school Tuesday and Wednesdays
  • Year 5/6 children on Thursday and Fridays

Commencing Friday 5th November

  • All children in all year levels will return to school

Below is a table that clearly details the return dates to onsite school. 

 

As you would appreciate, many significant adjustments are required to ensure compliance and the safety of students and staff.  We will continue to follow the health advice to ensure staff and students are safe onsite.

  • Students will return to onsite learning in a staged way.
  • Ventilation strategies, wearing masks and continuing to follow health advice will help maintain schools as safe places.
  • TheirCare OSHC (before and after school care) is open to children attending school on the relevant day for the year level AND other children eligible for onsite supervision and learning.
  • The Victorian Government is delivering air purifier units to most Catholic schools. We await further advice from Department of Health about the use of purifiers.
  • The state government is offering grants for shade sails for schools and I will be applying for this grant so that we can provide shade and more covered outdoor learning areas for our students.

For now, we look forward to Friday 5th November, when we can welcome all of the children back to school. 

 

Onsite Supervision

If you require onsite supervision can you please ensure you meet the criteria below:

Category A

1. Children where both parents/carers are considered authorised workers, who cannot work from home, work for an authorised provider and where no other supervision arrangements can be made.

2. Where there are two parents/carers, both must be authorised workers working outside the home for their children to be eligible for onsite provision at school.

3. For single parents/carers, the authorised worker must be working outside the home for their children to be eligible for onsite provision at school.

Category B

4. Children experiencing vulnerability, including:

  • in out-of-home care
  • deemed vulnerable by a government agency, funded family or family violence service, and assessed as requiring education and care outside the family home
  • identified by a school or early childhood service as vulnerable, (including via referral from a government agency, or funded family or family violence service, homeless or youth justice service or mental health or other health service)
  • Where a parent/carer indicates that a student with a disability is vulnerable because they cannot learn from home, and/or informs the school the student is vulnerable due to family stress, the school must provide onsite supervision for that student. This may apply to students enrolled in specialist schools and
  • Ungraded students with disabilities in specialist and mainstream schools return to onsite learning with their year level equivalent cohort.

NAPLAN 2021 RESULTS

Each year, students in Years 3 and 5 complete the National Assessment Program of Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN).

 

NAPLAN is the only national assessment that all Australian children undertake that monitors students’ ongoing literacy and numeracy progress. The results provide parents and schools with an understanding of how individual students performed during the test.

NAPLAN is only one form of assessment, and the results should be considered with our school based assessments and reports.

 

The NAPLAN tables below indicate the following results :

  • Students in Year 3 are above the State and National benchmarks across all areas: Reading, Writing, Grammar and Punctuation, Spelling and Numeracy
  • Students in Year 5 are above the National benchmarks across all areas: Reading, Writing, Grammar and Punctuation, Spelling and Numeracy.

As a school we celebrate students’ achievements in NAPLAN and stress the importance of using these results in collaboration with our ongoing school-based assessments and reporting.

 

The NAPLAN results will support our ongoing direction for professional learning and the development of improved targeted teaching. In addition, the trends are used to support the design of whole school strategic planning for future direction.

 

YEAR 3

 

School Closure Days Term Four-Pupil Free 

At the beginning of the year, we had scheduled two school closure days for Professional learning in Term 4

 

Given the current situation, we will reschedule the School Closure Day to:

Friday October 15 - School Closure Day cancelled

Monday November 1 - (Melb Cup Eve) - School Closure Day - Report Writing & furniture relocation in new area.

Tuesday November 30 - School Closure Day - Planning 2022 

CHROMEBOOK CARE

This is a message to all parents and students who are using a school Chromebook during remote learning.

 

There have been six Chromebooks dropped into the front office at the end of last term in need of repair due to camera related issue, cracked screens, missing keyboard keys etc.

 

These Chromebooks are only 18 months old and the school has invested lots of money to ensure we can have updated devices for all the students. Some of these issues are directly related to carrying the device around with the lid open, deliberately picking the keys off the keyboard and in general being rough with what is a device that belongs to the school and use for ALL students. 

 

Please have a conversation with your child about being careful and respectful with the devices when handling them as we have just about run out of loan devices. Thank you for your assistance with this. 

 

Take care,

Manuela

Building Update Pics