Principal's Message

Principal's Message

If you are reading this sentence, you are showing a base level of engagement with your school. It is the first signal that the education of your child is of value to you. Well done. 

If your intention is to read this, and all iNewsletters, along with Compass Newsfeeds, emails from your child's classroom teacher, parent information sessions, parent-teacher interviews - then your level of engagement is clearly very high and you are fully invested in your child's education. 

As with everything in life, there is a bell curve. I believe that anything 'in the extreme' needs to be treated with caution. You can over-invest or under-invest in anything, including your child's education.  Some families are tremendously difficult to engage. We keep data on parents' attendance at parent-teacher interviews and getting-to-know-your-child-chats and, generally, the families with low participation rates have children with greater educational or behavioural challenges. Fully invested parents who turn up and keep informed generally have children who do well in most areas. There is a strong correlation.

Similarly, and at the other end of the scale, there are over-invested parents who keep such close tabs on everything that their children can feel psychologically suffocated. There is a line that should not be crossed, lest you rob your child of independence and autonomy. 

It is not easy being a parent and nobody gives you a manual. I can tell you that first-hand, being the parent of two (now adult), but complex human beings. It is tough.

On Friday, we sent out a Newsfeed pertaining to the upcoming Getting-to-Know-Your-Child Chats. The subject of these chats can be found in its naming. We will keep data on who turns up and try our best to get 100% attendance from you in person. We historically get to between 92%-94%. We hold out high hopes of breaking the 94% barrier.

I urge all parents, for the sake of their children, to be "moderately invested" families at a minimum and to guard against being too far under or over. Reading the information we put out (iNewsletters, Compass Newsfeeds, Emails) should be the baseline. I guess those who are 'under' won't even be reading this - so it can be tough at our end as well.

Your children are simply magnificent. The staff are A-graders. There is a lot of information in this and other channels but I do ask you to invest in the future of your child so your (and their) dreams come true. The children's best version of themselves relies on you.

On a separate note, I read recently that 'soft skills' are just as important as academic ability. At SMPS we agree with that summation. Soft skills include the social and emotional aspects of working as a community (one of our values). Things like smiling, eye contact, kindness, care for others - all make up the wonderful suite of 'soft skills'. We teach these explicitly and assess for them; providing feedback and support to students who may struggle in these areas. The world is a complicated place and our children will inherit a place needing social, emotional and academic skills to thrive. 

Last thing - do yourself a favour and read the bios of our staff on the Leaders and Wellbeing pages of this iNewsletter. We have the most amazing and diverse human beings on our staff. I love them!

Getting to Know Your Child Chats

Our “Getting to Know Your Child” Chats are occurring during the week of February 20th - 24th. 

A News Feed was sent with details about this yesterday. The News Feed includes how to book, logistics and topics that may be discussed.

We look forward to everyone booking on Compass and meeting in person when the time comes so we can work together as a Community.

Parent Feedback

Each year, we seek feedback from SMPS parents about how we are going as a school. One of the ways we do this is via the Parent Opinion Survey. All schools across Victoria offer this survey and our results are compared to the average across the state.

We have received our results from 2022. These indicate strengths in the following areas, with SMPS families scoring these areas higher than the Victorian school average.

The survey also identified some areas where we can, and should, improve. Whilst there were many positive responses about children feeling safe at school, the following question suggests that we need to do more with our children about strategies to address bullying behaviours:

• My child feels confident about the skills and strategies he/she has learnt at school to address bullying behaviours

We will also be using the next few weeks to focus on organisational skills for homework completion, such as completing it earlier in the week, marking it off in student diaries, etc., based on responses to the following question:

• My child is taught organisational skills to help him/her with managing homework and/or schoolwork load

We are so appreciative that families took the time to complete this survey so that we can an accurate picture of what SMPS parents think. We love getting feedback on how we are going and how we can improve. If you have any feedback that you would like to share throughout the year, please get in contact with your child's teacher or our office.

Annual Privacy Policy Reminder

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy.

Please take time to read our school’s collection notice, found on our website https://southmelbourneps.vic.edu.au/our-school/#policies.  For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents. This information is also available in ten community languages:

• Amharic
• Arabic
• Dari
• Gujarati
• Mandarin
• Somali
• Sudanese
• Turkish
• Urdu
• Vietnamese