Principal's News

A Busy Week

A very exciting and active few weeks at our school, we are even enjoying some warmer weather and we are crossing fingers that we can enjoy a little more of this over the coming weeks with some further exciting events planned. A walk around the school grounds over the last few days has seen plenty of activities occurring involving our whole school community. The Year 5/6s have enjoyed a round robin basketball competition, the Year 1/2s are busy designing still life food collages in visual arts and our parent club Japanese language program was again busy in the kitchen working on following a recipe in Japanese. The one common element amongst all these activities was a community focus and enjoying working with one another. Something that I am reflective of in our school and something I think we can be very proud of as a school community. Over the next week we are looking forward to our Athletics Carnival on Monday and the Year 1/2s are off on their excursion to Scienceworks. On Thursday of next week, we are proud to be hosting the Bilingual Schools Network Meeting, an opportunity that Morita Sensei describes as ‘like the Olympics of Bilingual Schools Network events.’

Parent Opinion Survey:

Reminder: A reminder that we are actively seeking your input and voice as we are in the process of collating responses for the Department of Education and Training Parent Opinion Survey. An annual survey that is extended to our whole school community, providing an important voice for parents and carers at Caulfield Primary School. Can I please direct you to this information that was shared via SchoolStream on Tuesday at 12:30pm. This contains the link and survey code that can be used to complete this survey. Schools are deliberately asked not to share the link or code via our public newsletter, but if you are unable to find the post on our SchoolStream feed, please let me know and I can email you the details directly. We welcome parent and carer input and this helps provide an important voice in our school and triangulates a data set of surveys that are completed annually with input provided from our Parents, Staff and Students. 

Bayside Peninsula Principal Forum:

Miharu and I spent large portions of today engaged in the Bayside Peninsula Principal Forum, an opportunity to join with other school leaders and pursue areas of improvement and focus. We heard from the Deputy Secretary, Dr. David Howes who reflected on the challenges of the 2022 school year, identifying this year as one of the most difficult years that we have encountered in the midst of the pandemic. Difficulties surrounding absences, teacher (workforce) shortages, sickness and a strong emphasis on retaining our face to face learning. He reflected on the benefits of that ongoing commitment to face to face learning. This has seen all schools return to the important social institution that it was pre-pandemic, returning as a pillar of social fabric to build connections, relationships and a sense of community. Dr. Howes acknowledged the challenges faced by school communities, noting that at times the teaching and learning programs in all schools were compromised because of high staff absences and an absence of Casual Relief Teachers. He argued that the benefits of ongoing face to face learning far outweighed any negatives, returning schools to their focus as a universal provider of learning and equally importantly wellbeing platforms for our students. 

Victorian Government Schools Agreement (VGSA):

 An important provision of the VGSA is for teachers to have a reduced face to face teaching load.  This is to attempt to provide greater time for the burden of planning and administrative load required of today’s teachers.  Whilst CPS teachers have always enjoyed a reduced teaching load, the VGSA will require further adjustment. This is a $780 million investment in teaching and learning from the Victorian State Government over the life of the new agreement to address teacher workload in the Victorian Education system. In context, at Caulfield PS, this will see the reduction of face to face teaching hours in 2023 for 30mins for each teacher with an additional 30mins provided in 2024. This can be seen a good thing as it may provide an opportunity to extend or introduce a new specialist program, most likely in 2024.  Staff are currently consulting on this with input sought from our Consultative Team, School Improvement and Leadership Teams. We are conifdent that this will not compromise the validity of our 50/50 bilingual program and will support teacher planning, collaboration and time providing obvious benefits to all our students from P-6. A new timetable will be required to implement the new face to face teaching time requirements. This is not a simple task, but when worked through is likely to provide positive opportunities. As we work through these processes with staff, I will continue to keep our School Council and school community informed about all of these developments.

Getting Active at CPS: Go for Gold in Term 4!

Get your shoes, bikes and scooters ready to walk, ride or scoot to school in Term 4! You will receive a Golden Ticket at the start of Term 4 and after an active month, you’ll be able to submit your entry into the draw to win a Fitbit Ace as well as help our school take out the interschool honours! Mark Friday 21 October in your diaries because we will be encouraging teachers, students and parents to participate in a car free day so everyone walks, rides or scoots to school together! Stay tuned for further information.

Establishing Relationships: 

Over the last few weeks the school has had significant interest from education providers in Japan including the Linden Hall Elementary School, which provides a mirrored approach by delivering an English Immersion education, offering all their classes in English except for Japanese and Moral Education. In addition to this, we began really meaningful discussions with faculty of education delegates from the Nakamura Gakuen University who are looking to collaborate with the school to develop teacher pathways for their students. These discussions were exciting for our school and further validated our approach to bilingual education and the wonderful work that our staff are doing to provide this authentic and unique experience for our students. 

 In addition to this, I have attended meetings over the last week with our Bilingual School Network Principal group who are working on a vision and mission statement that further puts forward the important evidence base around Bilingual education. I also attended the Australian Council for Educational Leadership network meeting where we looked at the work of school leaders in promoting professional learning and engagement to support improvement cycles.  

Supervision: Before and After School

During the school day, all teachers take their duty of care very seriously and work closely together to ensure students are supervised whilst in classrooms and also out in the playgrounds. We continue to take our supervision and Yard Duty very seriously and have  staff assigned to areas from 8:45am before school, through each recess and lunchtime, as well as after school until 3:45pm. To ensure that students are appropriately supervised, we ask that students arrive at school after 8:45am each morning. If your child/ren arrive at school prior to 8:45am, it is important to understand that they will not be supervised until yard duty teachers begin their assigned duty from 8:45am. Similarly, at the end of the school day, the school will ensure the appropriate supervision of all students until 3:45pm and after this time it is the responsibility of parents to collect / supervise their children. Could I please encourage your child to not stand unsupervised in the carpark before school, instances of children running and playing games in the carpark is only one small lapse of judgement away from an accident. We do sometimes have contractors arriving in the carpark and it is not a supervised area. Please encourage your child to make some responsible decisions to support our supervision requirements and their own safety. 

Wishing all our school community a wonderful weekend ahead, please cross your fingers for us for some good weather for our athletics carnival and Scienceworks excursion on Monday. 

My Thanks,

Edward Strain