Delacombe Primary School

From The Principal's Desk

15th March 2023

 

 

Dear Parents and Carers, 

 

I hope you managed to enjoy the long weekend as we enter Week 8 of schooling for the term.  I would like to thank our school community for supporting our School Fete that was held almost two weeks ago now. It was a great success and it was wonderful to see so many past students and people from the local community. The occasion raised approximately $11,000 for the school and this will be put towards some shade sails we wish to install over the Grade 3-4 playground space. 

 

 

Over the past few weeks, we have our new classroom teachers working through some of our school programs that we adopt specifically for our school.  This has meant that we must take them out of the classroom on occasions to complete this training.  We are now in our final week of one of those training sessions so we expect that for those classrooms it will be more settled for all students.  These training sessions are important for the consistency of approach we like to have at our school and ensure our teachers are provided the time to learn these programs effectively.

 

 

This week our Grade 3 and Grade 5 students participated in the NAPLAN assessment.  This is a tool the Department and school uses to guide and inform us of the progress students are making in our school.  It is one tool that is able to measure some of the key areas of the curriculum such as Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation and Numeracy. This year most of the assessment is online. Our students from Grade 3-6 have been used to the blended approach of technology and bookwork thanks to the supply of chromebooks for every student in every class, so this new format for NAPLAN will not be too much of a change for students. 

 

We expect all of our students to try their personal best, the same as we ask of them every single day.  The results we expect will come back to parents and the school in about Term 3.  The national minimum standard will be replaced with 4 levels of achievement: 

Exceeding,  Strong,  Developing and Needs additional support.

 

Next week on Thursday 23rd March it will be our House Sports day for students in Grade 3-6 and will occur at the Doug Dean Oval next to the school site. This is a great day for parents and carers to pop and see their child participating in the carnival.  The schedule is available on the 3-6 House Sports Page. Lunch for the students in Grade 3-6 will be at 12.45pm. The Delacombe PS café will be open on the day for coffees and hot drinks.  Parents and Friends will be selling lunches as a pre-ordered event for all students from Prep – Grade 6.

  Changes to the reports schedule and parent teacher interviews

After consultation with our Parent Liaison group, School Council and staff we have made some changes to the process of Parent teacher interviews and student report timelines. 

 

Parent teacher interviews for the Semester 1 reports will remain in Week 1 of Term 3.  It was suggested that Parent Teacher interviews be available at the end of Term 2. This was looked at and found that our nine week Term 2 in 2023 made it challenging to fit in Parent Teacher interviews in Term 2.  This is more likely in 2024.

 

Our reports in Semester 2 will be adjusted so that Parents receive them at the end of Week 10 in Term 4.  Term 4 is an 11-week term.  This allows for parents to follow up with the classroom or specialist teacher if they have any concerns.  It was suggested by School Council that Parent Teacher interviews in the last week of Term 4 may not be well attended, and that staff provide their availability on a needs basis for interviews. 

Parent and teacher communication 

There has appeared to be some concern over students being permitted to go to the toilets during class time.  We have discussed this matter at our recent staff meeting and all staff are aware that students may need to go to the toilet during classroom learning time. If there are students who are going more regularly than is normal a teacher may have a follow up discussion with the parent to get some clarification on the situation. 

 

This concern about toilets has been voiced on social media and my advice to that concern has been to seek some clarification from the teacher. They are the best person to seek some clarification or further information. I encourage any parent or carer that should they have a concern about an issue in the classroom that they look to work with the classroom teacher to solve this.  The best form to do this is via the Compass email system and email the classroom teacher about your concern. The teacher will then look to follow up the concern via phone call or a reply email. By working together, we have a much greater chance of making our school environment the best place for our students to be, which is what we all want.

School Uniform Supplier update 

In our recent School Council meeting it was suggested that we investigate our school uniform supplier, mainly to see if other suppliers can provide a better price for the same quality.  Currently we are with Lowes and we have met with them along with Crockers and Belezia.  The Uniform working party will look to present the information to School Council next week and look to make a decision on our uniform supplier moving forward. 

School Council Members 2023 

We are pleased to announce our School Council members for 2023 who will attend our Annual General Meeting next Monday 20th March.  This will be followed by our election of office bearers:

The members are:

Mark Wall – Parent 

Martijn Verheij – Parent 

Lauren Powell – Parent 

Amanda Anderson – Parent 

Felicity Hickingbotham – Parent 

Daniel Cook – Parent 

Anita O’Neill – Parent 

Marnee Charles – Parent 

Briony Oldaker – Parent 

Kate Mc Donald – Parent 

Marnie Cooper – Department of Education

Scott Phillips – Department of Education

Stephanie Lindsay - – Department of Education

Brendan Arriagada – Department of Education

Danielle Mc Cann – Department of Education

 

We wish to acknowledge the commitment these members have made to assist in guiding our school moving forward.

  Looking ahead into Term 2

We have a number of important events to put in your diaries early in Term 2 

  • Monday 24th April will be a Curriculum Day and no students to commence school
  • Anzac day march for school leaders and JSC members on Tuesday 26th April 11am
  • Thursday 27th April will be School Cross Country P-6 on the Doug Dean oval
  • Grandparents Day will be on Friday 12th May from 9.30am -11.00am
  • Grade 4 Camp 15th – 17th May – Cave Hill Creek