Dear Parents, carers and community,

This week we are finalising our Annual School Report. This is an annual document that captures a school’s journey over one year. It reports directly from our School Management Plan and focuses on our strategic directions, student outcomes and responsibilities around school budget.

One of the important measures that we use is the ‘Tell Them from Me’ that offers surveys to students staff and parents. It is our key indicator that drives school direction. The survey results inform school improvement so it is very important that we get 100% input. The students and teachers are given time in class and during professional learning. It is our parent cohort that we need to capture more comprehensively and more importantly explain the purpose and the process of this important tool.

‘Tell Them From Me’ informs us around these measures:

·         Student outcomes and school climate (students  Years 4, 6 and 8)

·         Focus on Learning (Teachers)

·         Partners in Learning (Parents)

In the last reporting round (22nd September- 24th September 2019) we had 24 responders to our survey. This year we are aiming to introduce strategies that make it so much easier for our parents to connect to this project enabling us to glean a truer representation of what our community thinks about many elements of our school life.

I encourage you to read and then store somewhere handy the Stage Overview that came home recently. This document is prepared by our Assistant Principals as a resource for parents. It outlines what the students are learning about this term and information about timetabling, excursions, sport and contact information.

Congratulations to our Rugby 7’s side that took out the Paul Harragan Cup yesterday. Our school approach to this sport is fantastic, with our parents in school staff shirts as Managers and Coaches working with a team of spirited and committed players with a bunch of super supportive parents. Well done! True whole school community effort. Thanks to Mrs King - super coach, even when she is really sick!

Next week in Professional Learning our teachers will be participating in a 3 hour session (3.30-6.30pm) around the new document’ Revisiting Gifted Education. This is the start of an ongoing professional learning journey that we are taking that will lead into our next Management Plan around High Potential and Gifted Education. With quality systems in place to support our students with extra learning needs through intervention processes we are now building our collectively capacity around making adjustments for our high potential and gifted students. We are absolutely committed to High Potential and Gifted Education.

I hope our families are looking forward to the P&C’s first ever Movie under the Stars event that is being held on the school oval tonight. The P&C have put a lot of work into ensuring that you can bring your family along to a safe and happy venue, that you won’t have to cook dinner and that you can fraternise with the community at a fun, family event….maybe need to bring the Aero guard!

A school is only ever as good as the active community that stands in partnership with it. Please consider this as we will be holding our annual P&C AGM on 10th March and it would be lovely to have greater representation from our wonderful community.

Mrs Saurins

Principal

As you are well aware the mosquitoes are particularly bad at the moment. We suggest applying Insect repellent before coming to school. You are welcome to send in a ROLL ON ONLY for your child to use while at school, however due to possible allergies this cannot be shared with friends.