FROM THE PRINCIPAL

A message from the Principal

Exciting Announcement

We were thrilled to receive the exciting news this week of a funding allocation for Ringwood North Primary School for $3.01 million. Dustin Halse MP and Deputy Premier, Minister of Education James Merlino visited the school yesterday (Thursday May 30) to announce the news to our community officially. 

The money has been allocated as part of the Asbestos Removal Program currently being undertaken by the State Government and will help to remove an ageing area and replace it with a beautiful new building. 

Our School and House Captains did a wonderful job yesterday greeting and interacting with our special visitors and had the opportunity to take them on a short tour of the school. 

Well done and thank you to those involved in communicating with Dustin in particular to make the case for our students' needs. 

(A preliminary sketch of what we hope the new building will look like! )

Winter warmth

Just a reminder that as the mercury drops and we enter winter, it would be a great idea for students to wear clothes suitable to the temperature. Shorts and summer dresses don't offer students a lot of protection, so maybe stick them on a high shelf for a couple of months and encourage your children (I know some of them can be very stubborn) to wear pants and a jacket. Our teachers will be doing the same at this end.

Invent the Future

Thank you so much to the wonderful community turn out for our Open Night on Wednesday May 22, Invent the Future. Students and families were having a wonderful interacting with the various activities on offer. I'm thrilled to see the creativity of our staff in preparing for a night like this and the adaptability they showed in accommodating for the first time guests from outside the school. 

I believe it is so valuable for schools make connections with the broader community and we owe a great deal to one parent, Beray Bray, for her efforts to help us do that for this Open Night. A huge thank you to our guests: 

* Mark and Bernard Ash from DCX

* Prasad Ganesh from KPMG

* Deborah Greenwood from Equiem

* Nick, Monique, Leigh and Anna from BAE Systems

I know that we have an enormous amount of knowledge, skill and talent in our parent community, so if you felt when you visited that you would like to contribute or help your company/university to make a community connection with us, please don't hesitate to contact me or your child's teacher to get something started. As long as we can find value for students and it progresses us in delivering our curriculum, we will always be interested - even if sometimes things don't work out logistically. 

I trust that the families who stayed for the Q&A session were provoked in their thinking and started to contemplate what an interesting journey your children are just beginning. I certainly left the night feeling enthused and excited for our students and my daughter, too. 

Parenting resources - Gender equality

This term our whole school Big Idea is Gender Equality. Students have looked at a variety of different elements of gender equality including respect, stereotyping, and workforce inequalities. I know that there is a lot of hype in the media to try and scare parents about some of these topics, but at the heart of this topic is a concept that I believe every parent and every Australian shares: we all have the right to feel safe and succeed. A focus on gender simply highlights one way in which people unfortunately discriminate against others.

The tragedy is, of course, the extent to which this discrimination and disrespect impacts on the lives of those around us. Domestic violence and gender-based violence is a massive issue in Australia; it is, we are learning, in part to some of our decisions as a society about what is and isn't acceptable behaviour and now we are starting the process of trying to undo some of those ideas. While we can talk about things at school and put in place rules or responses to behaviour during the day, there is no doubt that home plays a massive part in talking about and role modelling appropriate behaviour for children. Seemingly innocent and simple things like the phrase 'Boys will be boys' have been used for decades to brush off behaviour that we know is unacceptable. It won't take much at school and at home to make a big and very meaningful change in society.  

I have included below a few links to help parents think about these ideas and talk about them with your children. This is a big change that's just getting started in Australia but every little bit counts. 

Parenting Ideas Article - Healthy Attitudes to Women      Link

Talking About Respect (Australian Government)                Link

Statistics About Domestic Violence in Australia (White Ribbon)                   Link

Suggestions for Parents & Caregivers  (Ourwatch)           Link