It’s been an energetic start to the term, marked by happy, enthusiastic children returning to classes and settling well into the new school year. We hope the first week of school has been a positive one - the teachers have certainly been impressed by the children so far!
Next week, we encourage you to come along to one of our open afternoon ‘drop-in’ sessions (Tuesday and Wednesday 3.30-4.30). This is an informal opportunity to meet your child’s teacher and visit the class. You are welcome to bring your child along with you if you wish.
Term 1 Parent Conferences are also scheduled to take place in Week 6, which will be dedicated time set aside to check in and get a sense of how things are going at the mid-point of the first term. Information on booking these will be sent home closer to the time.
You may have heard a recent announcement about changes to school reports being introduced by the government. This was new information for schools, but from what we have seen, this will not have any immediate effect on what you can expect to receive this year in relation to your child’s progress and achievement (with written reports sent home in Terms 2 and 4 as usual).
The introduction of common reporting language for all schools makes a great deal of sense from a parent perspective, and we anticipate it will only require some minor change to terminology we use.
Otherwise, we await clarification of some of the statements made in the announcement, although it seems clear that our existing assessment and reports already largely meet the requirements announced. The new 'SMART' assessments that have also been mentioned are still in the pilot/development stage, so we don't actually expect these to be in use nationally until 2027.
Additional support for parents has also been made available in a ‘Parent Portal’, which contains information and ideas about how to support children’s learning at home, organised by year level if this may be of interest.
