From the Principal 

Dear Parents and Carers,

Seeing all our students coming in each day smiling, laughing and playing with their friends has been a delight to see following the last two years of interruptions. We want to thank parents and students for the great job they have done in keeping our school as safe as possible by following important COVIDSafe measures such as mask wearing, physical distancing, ventilation, getting vaccinated and rapid antigen testing. This has meant that our school has remained open and our students in class. This is a fantastic outcome and a testament to the hard work of parents, Carers, Students, and school staff.

Ayaka Sensi has picked up a short-term contract at Caulfield Primary School for Term 1. While this has limited our opportunity to provide Japanese lessons to our students, we are investigating new options for our students. We look forward to Ayaka’s return in Term 2.

 Teaching and Learning at SPS

As always, we are committed to the improvement of Teaching and Learning. As part of our School Annual Improvement Plan this year, we are turning our focus to the teaching of Mathematics. Although our School does well in Mathematics, we want to ensure our programs are excellent and the best they can be so our students are able to maximize their learning outcomes. This year our school has been asked to join a Department of Education Project targeting our High Performing students of whom we have many. There are only 19 schools in the Southern Metro Region (1200 schools) who have been invited to join this project.  Our Leadership Team will be working with Dr Simon Breakspear to further challenge our Grade 4-6 Students in Mathematics. 

In addition to this opportunity, we are focusing on extending students and differentiation as part of the 2022 Annual Implementation Plan. This ensures all students from Foundation to Grade 6 are challenged and taught at their point of need. Felicity Elliott has been working with the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Learning specialists Professor Peter Sullivan and Dr Doug Clarke on extension mathematics, challenging problems and applying mathematical knowledge. 

This year Shane Gagiero has continued our Victorian High Abilities Program, this program is offered in all state schools for students who are achieving exceptional results. We have a number of students working with Mr G. and the VHAP team further extending their educational opportunities. 

This year we are going to be reintroducing Mathletics awards for students who have accumulated points for tasks, quests and challenges completed; we will be reviewing all Mathletics each fortnight. It’s been excellent to see so many of our students improving their automatic response times and use of the four operations. 

Kiss and Go and student safety

Each year as we welcome new families to our wonderful community, I need to let everyone know the shared expectations around parking and road safety for both the school and the kindergarten. Our education precinct is unique and special to Somerville and to ensure we keep everyone safe I ask everyone to follow the following rules:

• The staff carpark - parents cannot park in and are not allowed to walk in the staff carpark on the western side of Eramosa Road East. This is to keep your children safe, both the school and Kinder receive numerous deliveries throughout the day, generally delivery drivers are not looking for children who maybe walking with a parent through the car park. 
• No dogs allowed inside the school/kinder grounds, a Department of Education rule across all schools and educational settings is that no dogs are allowed in the grounds unless they are a dedicated therapy dog.
• The Kiss and Go zone is for quick drop offs/pickups and only allows for 2 minutes of parking, cars should not be left un-occupied, if you need to park for longer there are other spots around the streets or parking at Aldi. 
• Please use the School Crossing rather than walking across Eramosa Road between cars, we want to keep everyone safe and model the safest option for our children. 

I will be providing a letter to our Kinder parents as well with the information above. If you would like to read the letter sent to the families, please see below attachment. 

Thank you everyone for your support with keeping our children safe.

Rapid antigen tests:

We will be sending home Rapid Antigen Tests tomorrow with all children for weeks 5 and 6. To keep schools as safe as possible, the Victorian Government has extended the COVIDSafe measures introduced for the beginning of Term 1. This includes extending the availability of free rapid antigen tests (RAT) for screening until the end of term. It is anticipated an additional 24 million RATs will be provided to schools and early childhood settings to continue to support early detection and prevent infection, for use at home.

Department of Health modelling indicates that in the first two weeks of school returning, the program has already prevented more than 21,000 cases in schools alone. Their modelling indicates, assuming a 75 per cent compliance rate with screening of students, that by continuing RAT screening in schools for the full 10 weeks of Term 1, we will prevent:

• 61,000 COVID-19 infections in children aged 5 to 17
• more than 150,000 COVID-19 infections in the overall community (on average 15,000 per week over 10 weeks, or more than 2,100 per day)
• around 400 hospital admissions.

The department will continue to supply RATs to our school for your use.  Once these are received, we will issue them in the same way as tests for the first four weeks of term. Twice-a-week testing continues to be strongly recommended for both students and staff.

Ventilation

Improving ventilation is one of the most effective measures to keep education settings safe. 51,000 air purifiers were delivered to schools by Term 1, 2022 to support COVIDSafe settings in schools.

Up to an additional 60,000 air purifiers will be rolled out to schools ahead of winter to supplement natural and mechanical ventilation during the cooler months.

The winter allocation will provide enough purifiers to cover all classrooms, in government schools and low-fee non-government schools based on current enrolments. This includes general purpose classrooms and other specialist classrooms such as art and science rooms.

Face masks

Mask rules will remain the same, with students in Year 3 and above required to wear masks – although they will not be required outdoors. We ask all 3-6 families to send students with masks each day to ensure everyone is kept safe. 

On behalf of the school, I would like to thank you again for your continued support in helping your child to complete the rapid antigen tests and other COVID Safe measures. As a result of these efforts our school can continue providing a safe environment for students and staff.

School Council Update 

At School Council last night we said farewell to Erica Brady. Erica has been the School Council President for many years; this role has a significant impact on the school. Erica was an active member of our School Review in 2021 and helped set the direction in our Strategic Plan. Our school has been incredibly fortunate to have had such a passionate and knowledgeable President. We still have multiple parent vacancies for School Council, if any parents would like to join, please contact the office.  I would like to thank School Council for their time and work in re-negotiating the parent payments for Camp Australia. The cost has been reduced by more than $10 dollars a session over the last 2 years. I am sure you will agree this is a significant saving for our families. As part of the new agreement, the service will also be receiving new equipment and resources for our children. 

Have a wonderful weekend,

David Tapp