Principal's Report

Welcome to Education Week.

I am constantly reminded of the terrific environment, programs and overall approach to teaching and learning we have at Doncaster as I visited all classrooms. On Monday afternoon when we had Open School as part of Education Week, I was proud to be part of the DPS team!

There is so much happening.

This year’s Education Week theme is ‘Active Learners: Move, Make, Motivate,’ which celebrates physical activity, hands-on learning and student voice in education. We have a number of activities and events planned including Open School on Monday May 15th from 2.15 – 3.15pm, Cross Country Day on Wednesday 17th, Girls AFL day on Thursday 18th and Grandparents/Special person morning tea from 9.30am on Friday 19th May .

Prep Enrolments for 2024

The Department of Education has released a new state wide timeline for enrolling in Foundation (Prep) for the 2024 school year. Following this new timeline, we have made 2024 enrolment offers this week.

If you have a child starting primary school in 2024, it’s time to enrol.

Enrolling your child now allows us to plan our classrooms, staffing and transition activities and ensures your child has the best start to school.

For more information, please read about when and how to enrol your child in Prep at vic.gov.au/enrolling-foundation-prep. There is more information on our website. This will assist schools preparing for the year ahead and it is hoped dual enrolments will cease. Every year families enrol in more than one school then at the last minute make a decision on which school to attend. This causes frustration for obvious reasons.

SCHOOL REVIEW

2023 is a review year at DPS. The first part of the review is our Pre-Review Self-evaluation (PRSE) which is a rigorous process undertaken every four years in the term prior to the school’s review.

Through the pre review self-evaluation, the school evaluates its improvement efforts by drawing together evidence of the school’s performance in comparison to the previous School Strategic Plan (SSP), proficiency levels against the FISO Continua of Practice for School Improvement, along with feedback from consultations with the school community. The PRSE should engage and empower the school community to contribute to a shared understanding of how well the school has performed over the life of its School Strategic Plan.

Our Review Team Leading the process:

Jim Hill, Carly Epskamp, Brent Granger and Niky Corfios.

This group will plan the pre review self-evaluation methodology and timeline, brief the school community of the process, organise consultations with school council, staff, students and the broader parent community, gather and analyse data, keep everyone informed throughout the process, prepare a pre review self-evaluation report for council, send the pre review self-evaluation report to the reviewer (Trudy Thomson), school council president, SEIL (Carolyn Elliot) and challenge partners.

Evidence the Review Team will collect includes but is not restricted to:

NAPLAN
English and Maths online interviews
School level reports
Staff opinion surveys
Parent opinion surveys
AtoSS
Panorama report data

In analysing these reports, we will look closely at trends, consider achievements of specific groups such as funded students and/or EAL students and we will compare these to state-wide data. Last week we started surveying students and asked a range of questions relating to their teachers, the curriculum, extra curricular activities and other things what they liked about DPS. We also asked how we could improve the school or any challenges they were aware of. Every response received will be used as evidence during the review process.

TIMELINE/DATES

**May 4th Review Team Meeting **May 9th Mentor Review Meeting

**May 25th Review Team Meeting **June 1st Review Team Meeting

June 15th Review team meeting **June 21st Preparation Review Meeting with Reviewer Trudy Thomson

**July 17th Review Validation Day **July 24th Review Field Day August 2nd Final Review Day

THREADS from further investigation as part of our Review include:

1 ICT

2 Welfare

3 Maths

4 Writing

5 Collaboration

6 School wide behaviours

7 EAL

8 Culture

9 Leadership

10 Documentation

School Council

At school council the school uniform policy was reviewed. It has been brought to my attention that lately some students are not wearing the uniform and a number of senior girls are not tying their hair up. With the recent spate of head lice it is strongly recommended that all students tie their hair up and back. This is not only for head lice protection, it is also a safety issue. We have cross country today and many girls have their hair down which isn’t ideal particularly those with long hair. When one or two students have their hair down, others see this as ok and before we know it, they’re all doing it. Parents have expressed frustration and have asked that we address this to ensure the message at school reflects the same message at home. In future girls will be instructed to tie their hair up.

The wearing of excess jewellery, nail polish and/or nail extensions is not part of the uniform policy. Dangly or loop earrings are not appropriate or safe and students will be asked to remove them if they are worn to school.

Studs and sleepers are appropriate earrings to wear.

Finally, chewing gum is not to be brought to school. It has been made clear to students that they are not to bring gum to school, yet they continue to do so. Your support regarding this matter is appreciated in advance.

Please see Student dress policy attached.

Student-dress-code-policy-May 2023.pdf

LACHLAN POULTON FAREWELL

Lachlan Poulton is one of our Grade 2 teachers. He recently applied for a new position at Bulleen Heights Special School. He was successful and he will commence at his new school in the following week. He started at DPS in 2006 some 17 years ago! He has seen many students come and go as they prpgressed through the school. This is an exciting new challenge for Lachlan and as he leaves us we thank him for his committment to DPS for so many years and wish him well.

The position created by Lachlan's departure has been advertised and we will announced the permenent replacement following the selection process. This process takes approximately three weeks. Until then we have secured the support of George Longinidis who we all know very well. Programs will continue and our goal is to minimise disruption during this change.

FRENCH

I am excited to announce that we are introducing another language at DPS. Students will continue learning Mandarin but our senior students will now be learning French. Our EAL (English as an Additional Language ) teacher Alex Xenitopoulos will continue to focus on EAL as her main role which keeps her very busy four days per week, but as a fluent speaker of French and with her experience teaching the French language, we are taking advantage of her skills and knowledge.

MOTHER'S DAY

Finally from me, I hope all our Mum's had a good day last Sunday. Thankyou to everyone for our terrific Mother's Day stall. We had a lot of support from parents selling gifts to students throughout the day last Thursday. While this was a wonderful fundraiser it was also a great activitiy because students, staff and parents were all involved and it brought people together and into - YOUR - school, which we love to see. It was a good example of many hands making light work!

Jim Hill

Principal