Principal's Message

Thank you to all families who have taken the opportunity to meet with your child's class teacher over the past fortnight. We hope that the conversations centring on students' strengths and goals will form a good foundation for learning into the future. While these interviews are valuable, please also be aware that we welcome contact with families throughout the year. If you would like to speak with your child's class teacher, please contact the Ben Venue office to arrange a phone interview or face-to-face meeting.

There is a lot happening in the second five weeks of this term, including the Young Leaders excursion, Thalgarrah visits, NAPLAN, school photos, small group excursions, cross country and Easter hat parade. Please check the calendar section of this newsletter regularly.

The P&C Multicultural Street Food Fair is back

Last year the Street Food Fair was a fantastic celebration of the multicultural nature of our school and a great opportunity to bring our community together for a night of fun and food. Our P&C will run the Street Food Fair again this year in early Term 2.

To help with planning, please complete the forms via the links below if you are interested in having a food stall at the fair (ingredient costs are covered by the P&C), or if you are interested in attending the event. 

Stallholder expression of interest form                  Diner expression of interest

For those new to Ben Venue and those who were unable to attend last year, have a look at the photos from the night in last year's newsletter.

NAPLAN

Students in Years 3 and 5 will sit the NAPLAN tests from next week. In previous years, student results on these tests were reported against achievement bands. From this year, the reporting scale will change to just four levels representing student achievement. These will be;

• Exceeding
• Strong
• Developing
• Needs additional support

Due to both cancelled NAPLAN testing in response to COVID-19, and now the change in reporting scale, schools have been unable to report on the average growth in student achievement from Year 3 to Year 5. This will remain the case until 2025, in which year our current Year 3 students will sit Year 5 NAPLAN, using the same reporting scale on both assessments.

Ben Venue has a good story to tell about the growth we achieve in our students. We also value this growth data as a tool to help us identify our areas of strength and areas for future improvement efforts. For this reason, we will be reviewing our internal assessment practices to ensure we have reliable tools to collect data on student growth. 

As with all formal assessment tools, NAPLAN represents a student's efforts and understanding in one 35-50min period in the year. Results across these assessment tools can vary significantly, and should be viewed alongside each other and classroom-based observational assessments.

Cam Pryce

Principal