Principal's Message

Principal's Message

Welcome to the start of Week 5 of Term 3. The end of this week represents the half way point of the term. The first part of the Leadership Team's term has been dominated by our School Review. The recognition the school received from the independent panel was amazing, with the majority of comments circling around the very high outcomes attained by such a young school. We have recorded extraordinary outcomes in student learning, and in our student/parent opinion surveys. These are the three key markers of any school's success. It is fair to say we have blitzed in these areas as a strong trend.

It is said that nothing works for everyone. This is true. In medical terms, no single treatment can guarantee an outcome. If it could, then there would be no variance in treatments or outcomes across the world. This is not reality. 

Schools are no different in this respect. The exception is that some things work for the vast majority of learners and families in schools. We are closing in on those things as some of our outcomes approach 100% as a trend. An example that was compelling was our plotting of individual students against NAPLAN. We found that students who have been with us for their entire schooling journey were vastly superior in outcome compared to those who had joined along the way. Basically, the longer a student stays at SMPS and are exposed to its programs, the more successful they become as a learner. This is heartening.

I sometimes (rarely) get pushback from individual parents who appear to have issue with our learning or wellbeing approaches. Whilst we offer a good listening and try our best to empathise and understand their viewpoint, we are not compelled to change our entire approach because one person has issue. We remain open to feedback and to new learning, but cannot throw out babies with bathwater. Our data over the last four years of review clearly show what is the baby and what is the bathwater. 

Despite the idiom that nothing works for everyone, we can see that some things work for lots of people - so we keep repeating the successful approaches as a result. We are proud of what we do and are committed to doing it even better.  I have included some information below on our amazing NAPLAN results and invite parents to visit the My School website to see the trend in our data (which is incredible). 

We are a click over 5 years old and are the envy of schools who have been operating for a century. I say this not with arrogance, but with a confidence in our staff, students and community to strive for success for the sake of the kids. We will continue to get better.

The way parents can assist in our growth is to do their best to adhere to the following points (advice I have given before that remains unchanged over the length of my career):

• Talk positively about your child's school in every forum (especially in front of your child)
• Contact your child's classroom teacher if there are any issues - nip it in the bud. Make those conversations constructive and not negative in tone
• Follow completely the program of the school
• Track the data put out by the school and work together with the classroom teacher to remediate any 'red' zones (Student Dashboards, Semester Reports)
• Engage with the school where you can (come in on Family Fridays, attend whole school events)
• Be kind and positive to staff, other students and families in your interactions - your positivity and optimism is contagious (as can be your frowns)

We have some data sets that are approaching 100% of student success. The human bell-curve of achievement is skewing to the right at SMPS and, whilst there can never be any iron-clad guarantee of success - following the advice above will get your child closer to a great outcome. A great outcome at primary school significantly contributes to the chances of great life outcomes. Life is tough for everyone - let's work together to make the start of your child's life as successful and positive as possible. It is within our control.

NAPLAN Outcomes

Main points:

• Our Network is called Beachside and it contains a group of about 25 schools geographically located close to ours. This Network is consider to be one of the highest achieving Networks in the State. The Network data in the table is in purple text.
• "Similar Schools" refers to schools that match us across Australia in profile (family occupation, English as a Second Language, ethnicity, etc). It shows how we are going compared to schools of similar type and socio-economic. Similar Schools data is represented in light blue text.
• Referring to the table below, SMPS is above Similar Schools and Network in every subject at both year levels. Our school's data is represented in yellow text.
• The Year 5 cohort is made up of our first ever students who started at SMPS from Prep (though some of those children would have arrived after Prep from other schools). We are proud to see their performance continuing to grow as they continue through the school.
• The highest scoring children in all subjects in both year levels have been at SMPS since Prep. This is despite new students over the years coming from a range of high-quality schools around the world - private, public, etc. No school has led to a child scoring higher than same-age peers who have been at SMPS since the start of their schooling years. What we do works!
• Enjoy reading the data...

Whole School Dance and Other Key Dates

Remember to set aside the data of Monday, September 4 (around 5pm-7pm) for the Whole School Dance. Tickets for the event coming out on Compass soon.

Other key dates for Term 3 are included below.