12 Oct 2022
WELCOME BACK
Welcome to the start of Term 4. I hope you and your child/children have enjoyed the spring break and are reinvigorated for the final term of the year this term.
ADDITIONAL SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT DAYS
The department is providing 2 additional school development days – one in 2022 and one in 2023 – to support teachers' professional learning and development which may have been impacted by COVID-19 over the last 2 years.
This increases the annual school development days for teachers to 6 per year. The additional days will be held on:
Monday 19 December 2022 (Tuesday 20 December 2022 is also a school development day)
Monday 18 December 2023 (Tuesday 19 December 2023 is also a school development day)
The last day for students in 2022 is now FRIDAY 16 DECEMBER.
REMOVAL OF MANDATORY COVID ISOLATION PERIODS
You may have heard that National Cabinet announced their decision to remove the isolation requirements for COVID-19 positive cases. The NSW Department of Education is working on this to make sure our COVID-smart settings are aligned when the change to isolation comes into effect on Friday 14 October. In the meantime, we will continue to follow the same measures we had in place for Term 3. I will provide an update once we have confirmation from the department.
NSW HEALTH VACCINATION REMINDER
Due to the ongoing pandemic and stay-at-home orders that were in place over the previous two years, NSW Health have noted that some children and young people have missed out on the non-COVID school-based vaccination programs that they would have taken part in. The department would like to remind parents and carers to make sure that all of their child’s vaccinations are up-to-date, including other non-COVID vaccinations.
If you are unsure about whether your child has missed any vaccinations, speak to your GP or go to NSW Health’s Immunisation requirements in primary and secondary schoolsExternal link.
Parents and carers who have children with persistent or ongoing symptoms of COVID-19External link are encouraged to have these assessed by their local health care professional. These symptoms may be related to other illnesses that require treatment and management by a doctor.
For more information on vaccinations refer to Vaccination requirements for school sites or the Australian Governments COVID-19 vaccinesExternal link.
On behalf of our school, I want to thank you again for your ongoing support in helping to keep our students, staff and community safe. I’d like to wish all our students and their families a great start to Term 4.
SYDNEY WEST ATHLETICS CARNIVAL
Well done to all of our students who competed at the Sydney West Athletics carnival on the last Friday of Term 3. Congratulations to our Jnr Girls relay (Julia, Emily, Kayla, Jolin) who made it through to the NSW State Athletics Championships being held at Homebush Olympic Park on Thursday 20 October.
YEAR 6 BODY IMAGE WORKSHOP
Yesterday, as part of the Dove Self Esteem Project Australia, our Year 6 students participated in the ‘Confident Me’ project, a 60 minute workshop aimed at opening up communication on appearance and body image.
The workshop has been created in conjunction with world leading experts in appearance anxiety and body confidence including Professor Susan Paxton, Professor in the School of Psychological Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
The workshop focused communication around the pressures young people face in relation to appearance, beauty and body image. Concepts covered yesterday included
Understanding the concept of the ‘perfect look’
Building Media Literacy
Developing Strategies to avoid comparing looks
Learning skills to champion body confidence
TELL THEM FROM ME – PARENT SURVEY
This Term, our school will be participating in the Partners in Learning parent survey, another part of the Tell Them From Me suite of surveys (student, teacher and parent surveys) on student engagement. The survey asks parents and carers questions about different factors that are known to impact on student wellbeing and engagement.
Running this survey will help our school understand parents’ and carers’ perspectives on their child’s experience at school. These include: communication between parents/carers and staff, activities and practices at home and parent/carer views on the school's support of learning and behaviour. This valuable feedback will help our school make practical improvements.
The survey is conducted entirely online on smartphones, iPads, tablets, laptops or computers. The survey will typically take 15 minutes or less to complete and is completely confidential. The parent survey will be conducted between 5 September and 4 November. Though participating in the survey is entirely voluntary, your responses are very much appreciated.
Information about the survey is available at the TTFM website.
To access the survey, click on the following link http://nsw.tellthemfromme.com/987ck
Neil Hinton
Principal