Principal's Report

Dear families,

After a significant time away, I am extremely happy to be back at work and catching up with all the events which happened whilst I was on leave. A huge thank you to Craig and the rest of the staff who did such a wonderful job in my absence, under some very challenging circumstances.

ASSISTANCE

The floods in our area have impacted on our community in a variety of ways. If there are any people who do require some assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact the school and we will endeavor to provide you with the support you need. 

SCHOOL COUNCIL & FINANCE

Our next meeting will be on Monday 21st November.

NAPLAN

The 2022 NAPLAN national results have been published. Currently we are still waiting on the release of the State and National data sets to be uploaded to the portal so we can provide more detailed results. 

Of course, NAPLAN results are not everything. They focus on two particular aspects of learning – literacy and numeracy – not the full range of knowledge, skills and attributes that we seek to develop in our students.

While not everything, they are one important measure we can use to assess the progress of our school, and the learning of Victorian students relative to their peers across Australia.

While our key focus is on each of our individual students, you may also be interested in what the NAPLAN results show about Victorian schools overall.

The Department of Education and Training has analysed the results for Victoria and found that Victorian students have achieved some of our highest results ever, maintaining our place as one of the highest performing jurisdictions, along with NSW and ACT.

For example, in 2022, Victorian Year 3 students achieved their best ever Reading results and were again the strongest readers in the country. 

Indeed, Victorian students performed particularly strongly at the primary level, with Victoria ranked first or second on eight out of 10 NAPLAN assessments, including all five assessments at Year 3.

I do want to take a moment to recognise these achievements and acknowledge the very hard work of not only the teachers and staff in our school but in all schools across Victoria, especially given the substantial challenges of the last two years.

That said, the department has identified areas where further work is needed. These priority areas for improvement are shared with other states and territories facing similar challenges, such as lifting numeracy results. 

In our case, one of our focuses will be on  lifting Spelling. Below you will see a summary of the percentage of students in the top two bands across the assessment areas. As you can see by the results, our school achieved some very impressive results, ones to be very proud of. 

GRADE 5/6 CAMP

Our students head off to Anglesea next week for their adventure camp. The weather looks promising and I’m sure the students will thoroughly enjoy the planned activities. 

SCHOOL CONCERT – COME FLY WITH ME

Thursday 17th November 2022

We have a new date for our concert. The concert will be presented on the stage at the Junction Hotel in Toolamba. Tickets are on sale, through the Qkr app only. The cost is $10 per ticket. Primary school age children and under are free. Tickets can be collected at the office.

Costume bags and notes are required back at by Monday 14th November. The bags are to be given to the classroom teacher.

Have a lovely weekend,

Regards Heather