Principal 

Aaron Cox

Principal

We are back - "We are here for the students"

We are very excited about having all students back onsite. Routines and structures are extremely important for children and unfortunately, lockdowns are a hindrance to children’s development in these areas. To support children upon their return, we have instigated two new positive initiatives.

 1.        We have almost doubled teacher presence out in the playgrounds during breaks. Teachers will be setting the high standards of behaviour expected of children here at Kingswood whether children are eating, socialising or playing with others. 

2.          Just prior to lockdown we instigated a QR system for all teachers to log all interactions with students whilst out in the play spaces. This data is analysed on a daily basis to identify trends so that assumptions are not the narrative. 

These initiatives are intended to be temporary in nature and will be evaluated by the School Improvement Team (SIT) on a regular basis. SIT will use feedback from students and teachers as well as the real-time collected data, to instigate any future changes.

Fabulous Job Everyone! "We thrive in a team culture, Connected to community" 

Families have done an amazing job during this snap lockdown. It was extremely difficult for many to balance work requirements and supporting online learning. The school can’t thank you enough for your support. Families participated as best they could and that looked different for many families. With children returning, our focus will be catching up as quickly as we can. We have been very fortunate this year to have the Tutor Learning Program which is proving to be a huge success and will only improve as we refine processes.

A special Thank You to our Specialist Teachers and Integration Support Staff - "We are here for the students" 

A special mention is needed for our specialist teachers and integration support staff who manned the school on a daily basis to provide a supportive learning environment for our onsite students. This obviously came at the expense of their normal programs. Supporting up to 25 students at a time in different online sessions and getting students to assessment sessions was logistically a huge task. Thank you one and all for your dedication in being there for our students.  

Celebrating why Kingswood is a great school - "Connected to community"

We are looking at how we communicate all the great things that happen at Kingswood. We have so much to celebrate and we are aware that with restrictions and requests for parents to not be onsite in the mornings, connectedness can feel a little disjointed for many. We are addressing a number of areas that we feel we can do better. One is the number of communications we send from school through Compass, another is how we celebrate our successes both internally with families and externally. We are looking at how we optimise our school Facebook/Instagram pages with timely updates from around the school. We will be training staff to oversee these updates. 

Readership of our newsletter is a little lacklustre and we would like to drive improvement. We send it every two weeks to 586 individual email accounts and we have, on average, one hundred people open the newsletter for a reading time of just two minutes. We would love to get feedback from the parent community about what parts of the newsletter you consider important so that we can better target our content to lift not only the read rate but also the time spent reading it. Our news broadcast seems to be a huge hit with our students and it is watched every week in classrooms. Children from Prep-Year 6 have been anchors, scriptwriters, producers and editors. This is a wonderful example of real-life literacy and student voice within our community.

Feedback or Enquiries? - "Connected to community"

Please contact the school directly for clarification on any communication sent through Compass or to provide feedback. The school does not have a two-way social media presence. We like to speak directly to people on the phone as this is the most efficient way to address any enquiries. We also respond to emails during work hours as well. If it something that you need to address with me, please do so at Aaron.cox@education.vic.gov.au. 

Again, we are very excited to be back.