Leadership Report 

BREAKING NEWS......IT'S OFFICAL!

The Department of Education & Training - DET have officially recognised Newlands Primary School as an Official Spanish Bilingual School for 2021 and onwards. This has been a long a journey and now I can say we have arrived as one of 12 schools State wide that is recognised as a Bilingual School. 

What does it mean? It means we will access extra funds to implement the program across the school. The resource funding will support a range of needs; extra teacher assistance to support the program, the provision of a range of curriculum resources such as: readers, teacher professional learning, and much more. 

This is a great outcome and I would like at this point thank all staff, school community for their support and faith that we are doing something more than just compliantly teaching a language.

Special mention with distinction goes to the key drivers of the application; Luke and Luisa. Without their imagination and passion to provide a non conventional application we may have missed out................so thanks to you both.  

Transition Day

What a fantastic turn out of Newlands newbies......Preppies and others who will be joining us in other grades across the school.

It was great to catch up with the new prep parents at the park. Thanks to Adam (School Council President) gathering the PFA gang and others to provide a wonderful spread at Dunstan Park.

A big shout out to the new staff for making time to be apart of whole school transition today and getting to know the students for 2021.

As I have mentioned before Newlands has come along way during time as principal and today for me was such a great moment personally. To realise that we have a total enrolment of 300+ students and a 50/50 split of English and Spanish.

Apologies......Foundation start process  

This morning I believe may have misdirected some Newlands newbies and others around the start of the year process for Foundation students. I would direct all new Foundation families and others to the calendar of this newsletter. 

The intention this year is to complete all assessment of Foundation in the first four days of Term 1 - Thursday 28/01/2021, Friday 29/01/2021, Monday 1/02/2021 & Tuesday 2/02/2021. 

Then on Wednesday 3/02/2021 Foundation students will join the rest of the students to be full-time at school.

Grumble, grumble from the library!

Dave has informed me that we currently have 220+ books still out on loan from our library. While the year has been a difficult one, Dave has tried as best he could to provide an opportunity for your child to connect with our library while remote learning was on.

Now we need our community to fossick around the house and gather any Newlands library books from under beds, behind couches or in the dog house and send them back to school. 

If we don't have the books back then our library collection is significantly diminished for others to enjoy. If books are not returned then we will issues fines to families who have not returned the book/s.

Laptop Portal-JB Hi fi

As many of you are aware we use laptops at school, not mac books or iPads. We understand that if you have previously purchased an iPad for your child, you can continue to them up until 2024. All new purchases need to be a notebook.

Our reasoning behind this is based on providing students with devices to learn typing and to also have access to Microsoft programs that provide a range of programs students will use in the future; even possibly on Macs at Coburg High.

If parents from Year 2 upwards wish to purchase a notebook, then this can only be done through JB Hi-Fi's portal. Using the portal comes with significant cost savings and a device suited for our school's requirements. Devices purchased through the portal will be delivered to the school at the start of February 2021.

https://www.jbeducation.com.au/byod

School Code - Newlands2021

Any enquires, please email Graeme Woodward at graeme.woodward@newlandsps.vic.edu.au

Last Day.....Finish 1.30pm

Friday 18th December is the last day. 

If parents non permanent users of Aftercare need the service, we strongly suggest you book ASAP. We have limited spaces available and cannot exceed our staffing ratios.