St John's School Newsletter

St John's 

School Advisory Council

SAC Meeting Update - 30 March

The SAC welcomed another new member last week, Jana, who has a daughter Elsa in Prep. The School Advisory Council discussed aspects of Leadership & Management including enrolments for 2023, the success of the Open Days so far this year and the Victorian Catholic Primary School Principal Conference which focused on HOPE, climate change, environment, autism, acts of kindness and the future of technology in our schools. 

In the Religious Dimension we considered the celebration of the sacrament of First Eucharist and the Whole School Holy Week celebration on Wednesday 6 April. In Teaching & Learning an Athletics Coach has supported our PE lessons this term for all classes and the Teachers in P-2 are participating in Maths Program – TMEL Transforming Mathletics Engagement and Learning in collaboration with Monash University. 

In Student Wellbeing there are Resilience groups and social skills groups underway with Emma  Pattison and Deirdre Cosgrave. While WOW Tuesdays has been a great initiative in collaboration with the Council and the Golden Boot will be awarded this Friday to the most active class.

In the School Community Domain, Parents are encouraged to meet their children after school in the playground with an opportunity to reconnect and socialise with other parents.

 

The Uniform Sub Committee shared their Survey results:

  • Winter uniform to include socks as well as tights with the tunic
  • Winter sport uniform to be updated with the option of a new style tracksuit pants with a tapered leg 
  • Sport uniform to be updated to include a new lighter feel sports polo shirt
  • Raincoat option to be added to the uniform also

Verona shared MACS survey results from October 2021in a presentation.

MACSSIS surveys

  • 16% of families completed the survey in October 2021
  • Remote learning and lockdowns were a major part of the year
  • Building project added to parents’ inability to be onsite and be connected and engaged

The survey results demonstrated an increase from families' perspective of teachers supporting them to engage with their child’s learning from 77% to 87%. Teacher's meeting your child's learning needs saw a huge increase from 77% to 94% and 94% of our students feel a sense of belonging at our school.

The School Climate Domain was very high throughout with 100% of our families feeling that the physical environment at St John's is very suitable. Approachability, respect and a sense of welcoming was very positive with scores of 93% for all areas.

Communication and receiving timely feedback was also very high and had increased over the past 2 years from 65% to 93%.

Increasing a sense of Catholic Identity, will be a priority for staff. Using an online platform to collate all communication and streamlining communications to ensure that families receive information in a timely manner and eliminating multiple communication sources is a goal for the SAC. 

The Survey suggested that parents do not understand all of the school’s process and procedures which we will explore further at the next meeting.

Family engagement will also be a focus and we will support the CA with running events to promote stronger family engagement.

The survey suggested that student safety was low in regard to the perceptions of student physical and psychological safety while at school. This could be in regard to the building works that took place throughout the whole year. The SAC will explore this further at future meetings. 

 

Our Next Meeting will be Tuesday 10 May.