Nhamirri walal,
Dan Lewinski started with us this week as the Assistant Principal of Wellbeing and Inclusion. I’m excited to expand our executive leadership team again after more than a year without this role. Dan spent this week working alongside our Senior Teacher Annie before she begins maternity leave. Annie has been a wonderful addition to our staff heading up School Wide Positive Behaviour, particularly around our ASIP goal focussed on acknowledgements. We wish Annie and her husband Sen well as they embark on the next chapter of their life, as parents.
Our enrolments continue to climb, and we currently sit at about 430 students. Attendance also remains strong, at 84%. This has been a significant increase across the year and will allow us to hire 3 more teachers to accommodate additional classes in 2024. We receive applications every week from teachers interested in working at NPS and have been working hard to ensure that the people we recruit are experienced and best suited to our school.
We already have 62 students enrolled for Preschool next year and Sarah Cooper has been busy meeting with each family. We hosted 2 Preschool Open Days last week and it was very cute seeing how excited the students and their families were as they moved around the preschool in anticipation of next year.
Last week the Preschool also had their much-anticipated Assessment and Rating. This consisted of 2 days of observations and nearly 5 hours of direct questioning. The Preschool team did a fabulous job showcasing our Preschool and the excellent service they provide. The assessor has a significant amount of evidence to wade through and moderate before she can send us our final rating and report.
This week we also completed our 2024 School Captain elections. 9 students nominated and each of them were strong and worthy candidates. We used preferential voting across the school with every vote being valid. Well done to all 9 of the candidates who delivered impressive speeches to the whole school. Xavier Blythe, Koby Carpenter, Robert Bolton, Charlotte Brewster, Erin Smith, Florence Ball, Fletcher Moresi, Poppi McGeoch and Adele McLennan.
Our Captains for 2024 are Koby Carpenter and Poppi McGeoch. Our Vice Captains are Fletcher Moresi and Charlotte Brewster. Mr Mac has received nominations for our 2024 Sporting House Captains and they will be provided the opportunity to address their Houses hoping to be nominated as well.
Other leadership opportunities at NPS include the Student Representative Council, which consists of a representative from every class from Transition to Year 6. These positions are voted on by classmates in Term 1 each year and always hotly contested. We also have Library Monitors, Toad Busters and other groups that students have the opportunity to be a part of.
For the past 2 weeks our teachers have been moderating at a team and whole school level. A significant amount of time is spend ensuring that the judgements we make are data informed and consistent with the Australian Curriculum. We have also adjusted our semester reports to include individualised comments from teachers. This adjustment is as a result of our School Survey and School Council feedback.
Our concert program has also been adjusted to reflect parent feedback. This year we will have 2 primary school award and presentation end of year concerts, with of Early Childhood on Tuesday 5th December and Upper Primary on the 7th December. The Preschool concerts will be held on Saturday 2nd December. Classes have already begun rehearsing across the school in preparation for the big events.
Student Led Conferences were held at preschool last night and are always very well attended. The growth in one year of a preschool student is quite remarkable. The preschool portfolios and the evidence inside them is a great example of this. Our Primary School Student Led Conferences are next week on Thursday 30th November, I hope you can make the time to attend.
The last day of school for students and teachers this year is Thursday December 14. All teachers from Preschool – year 6 have engaged in additional professional development which has been endorsed by the CE. The Year 6 final send-off assembly will be on this day also.
The next 3 weeks will be action packed and I look forward to seeing you at our last few events for the year.
Kind regards,
Rachel Blundell
Principal
