Thank you to all parents and carers for your cooperation and engagement with our recent parent teacher interviews. The slightly changed timeslot allowed our teaching staff to engage with more parents and carers over the afternoon and evening. This is something we will repeat in the future, but we will make some arrangements to change our venue in the school as it seems we may not be able to continue to squeeze into the Imperial Playhouse. Your engagement with teachers around learning makes positive contributions to your students' learning success and is strongly encouraged.

As a school we are committed to giving our teachers opportunities to build their professional capacity in the classroom. Educators, like students, are life long learners, who continuously work at our craft. You may remember earlier in the year we had James Nottingham, a renown educator work with our staff. Recently he returned again and taught a class of our students, fishbowl style with a room of educators looking on. Our pedagogy team will build on the learning from this day with our staff. If you are interested in James Nottingham and his research, please visit https://www.learningpit.org/

Lastly, I want to remind everyone as we near the midpoint of the year that your students’ attendance at school really matters. I know that students will give parents all kinds of reasons that they don’t need to be at school on particular days or times. I also acknowledge that these reasons or mindsets may be challenging to manage in the home environment for parents and carers. However, missing just half a day of school a week, is about 20 lessons worth of missed learning in a term. Over a year, this same absence would amount to four weeks. You would be concerned over a student having a four week gap in their learning without a significant reason, so please treat the smaller daily absences the same. Absences from school do impact student learning over time, just the impacts are watered down and minimised when spread. If you have concerns over your students attendance, or need school collaboration to get your student in improved attendance patterns, please contact the Head of Student Services for your child's year level.

Kind regards,

Sandra Quinn
Principal