Dear Parents and Carers,

It was the school council meeting on Wednesday, and the Annual General Meeting, where we have an opportunity to provide the community an update on our Annual Report and summarise the activities that occurred in 2020. For those that couldn’t attend, here is a broad summary of the overview provided:

Our 2020 was very much dominated by the context of the COVID pandemic. As a Council, our focus was on responding to the ever evolving needs of the School, ensuring budgets and activities could be reorganised, managing risk and thinking through potential challenges for 2021. The AGM is an opportunity to surmise our Council response, but also highlight the ongoing fantastic response of the School in its student outcomes; particularly through this challenging year.

In 2020 we had 763 students, 52.51 equivalent full time teachers and aspirations to continue to educate to our values of Kindness and Empathy, Gratitude, Inclusiveness and Critical and Creative Thinking with an ongoing focus on achieving excellence through our relationships, by creating learning opportunities and engagement of students and community. As indicated in the annual report (available on our school website) educational outcomes are delivered against a framework for learning. In the report year the focus was on implementation of our values in an online environment, learning about and upskilling online competency and to deliver toolsets that enabled improved online learning.

The report indicates that the schools educational outcomes remain high. Due to COVID, NAPLAN could not occur, but digital assessments to monitor outcomes indicated that 74% of year 2 to 6 were one or more years ahead in English. In Maths, 44% were one year of more ahead with 45% at the expected level. These outcomes were achieved with a focus on engagement. Students were engaged and connected through Webex for a large portion of the year and the school captain program was continued. With our year 6 also being responsible for roles in programs across the school. Our desire to engage the community continued with frequent digital communication, but we recognised the challenges of distance and low contact through the year. This has been a focus for us to address as we progress through 2021.

COVID placed significant demands on the wellbeing of students, teachers and our community. Throughout the year the school had to adapt to the uncertainty of COVID and there was an emphasis placed on ensuring students and staff were supported, with additional integration staff supporting students that needed assistance. On return to school following lockdowns, the school ensured collaborative learning was prioritised and placed a limited focus on IT and digital toolsets; reflecting the need for a greater sense of interaction that our students needed.

Overall our Financial performance remained on-track with a surplus of $342k. This was largely driven by excursion funds being unspent and rolled into 2021, lower operating costs as a consequence of students being offsite and our relief teacher requirements falling. We received a one-off grant funding of $163k for our All-abilities Play Space, which was delivered last year.

Within the School Council we made decisions to adjust budgets based on lower fundraising (i.e. no school fair) and to flex with the changing landscape last year. The response has meant we are in good shape to be able to ensure annual maintenance can be executed and significant one off items for our ageing school buildings can be accommodated. We focussed on the new school building with weekly engagement with the Victorian School Building Authority and architects, and are excited about the Passivhaus standard build that is now well progressed. The council reviewed all the key school contracts and in particular went to tender for and recruited the new after hours providers, and made decisions around the direction of the new Bring your Own Device technology. Across our maintenance activities we replaced fascia’s that were rotting, ensured discrete maintenance and painting occurred and significantly upgraded the play space with our new playground on Gold Street.

We recognise 2020 was a highly unusual year that presented significant challenges to the school, students and community. As a council we continue to support our teachers who consistently aim to sustain and improve educational outcomes for our children, and hope (with the support of all our parents) to continue to provide an excellent environment and platform for our children this year and the years ahead.

Regards,

Brian Bird

School Council President

French Poetry Competition