2 July 2025

From the Principal

This week our students in years 1 to 6 will receive their rating report against a 9-point scale for key learning areas from the Australian Curriculum, as set out in our Department’s policy for Communicating Learning Progress to Families. This format is standardised across our system. Prep do not receive this mid-year, but do at the end, predominately due to the significant developmental growth in Prep. Kindergarten are not assessed against the Australian Curriculum, as such they do not receive this style of report. Please look out for this report in your child’s bag.

It’s been a huge term for us all, a big thank you to all our families for being invested in our school and helping your children manage our build and moving so well. This week our third last classroom will move into place – 2-3A will move up to their repainted room. 2-3B will move sometime soon as well as our 3^rd Kindergarten with Mrs Wilson.

Excitingly, from the start of next term, the top gate will be open for use to come into and out of school. It’s been a long 18 months without this entrance and exit – thank you for your patience!

Our 1-2 Team set up an amazing student led Winter Walk event last week! It was a fantastic evening attended by over 200 people. A huge congratulations to all the students who put effort in to speak and share and guide families – it was a lot of fun. A big thank you to the many staff who put in time to both set up and then pack down the event. It was a magical evening and much appreciated by all. It is always fantastic to see and hear students connecting to their learning with their families.

Attendance

Attendance is a significant issue for all schools, across our state, our country and world-wide. Pre-COVID, attendance was starting to slide, COVID shone a huge light beam on the issue. At our school, our attendance has slipped nearly 4% over the past decade. It doesn’t seem like much, but for some students, the continual missing out is having an impact. Interestingly, sickness has not really shifted much in the past 4 years. COVID year was a bigger hit with sickness, but we have had less sickness from 2021 to now. Our biggest increase has been holidays during school term and medical appointments (only small but steadily increasing).

The reason why it matters is really clear - students who have less than 90% attendance are missing too much instruction; they may miss out and not learn enough to keep up with the year level expectations. There is clear evidence that 90% attendance is needed to get the most out of our classroom instruction. The tight rope we need to walk is: students need to stay home when they are sick, some students have chronic illnesses and can't attend as much as they'd like (we deeply empathise with our few parents in this position), medical appointments are when you're given them now (not when you'd like), and in our community, interstate and overseas holidays are significantly cheaper in school time.

We currently have more than 1 out of 5 students missing a day a fortnight (averaged out, all reasons “78.1% of students attend 90% of days or more”). To be clear, roughly 1500 days away from our school every year are due to holidays. That's a lot of missed learning. It's like a class and a half missing a whole term. It has an impact. And It’s increasing. Our attendance data summarised over the past few years is below (the percentage is the absence rate; we effectively have no “discipline” or “truant” rates).

For all students, a good holiday can significantly increase their background knowledge and vocabulary. So, there are benefits to holidays. The connection to family, the new adventures – it’s great fun! I’m just as guilty as the next person of occasionally doing it (a wedding interstate, a significant family event). The challenge for us at school is to reduce the days off that students have when they are struggling to keep up at school.  Especially if this is a repeated or regular event. With reports going home, you’re about to get a reminder of the number of absences your child has had.

We track our attendance data and note when it is impacted by longer holidays. We will be making calls home during Term 3 for the students who we note, on average, are missing nearly a day a week and there isn’t a big answer for us. If you’ve been long term sick, or we know about appointments, then we can see this data. There is a slight increase in our community of students having days off more regularly. If you are not at school, you are missing out. It is especially important if together with families we are attempting to support students who are already struggling. Missing out on interventions can be impactful. We note that our best attending days are excursions, camps, sports days, special events in class and school photo day. It can be worse after evening events (which is one reason why we can’t have an evening disco anymore, students get too tired and stay at home the next day).

I'll talk more in Term 3 about what we can do to promote attendance (rather than focus on absenteeism). The first thing that we are going to do is to have a spinner for attendance in every assembly. Every student who has above 90% attendance between each assembly will automatically be in the draw. Do I think this will fix the decline? No. Neither will a sermon in a Newsletter. Yet hopefully, a few strategies together can work to reverse the tide, only because we all genuinely care about helping your children learn better every day. And we can’t do that if they’re not here.

Possible Yr 6 Camp

In the last Newsletter, I said I’d get a message out to you all soon. Since then, I’ve been working my way through many parents who responded that they’d be ok to chat about the reasons why they put their answers forward that they did. As with most things toward the end of any term, it has taken some time. We are working through this, and this final piece of information will help me form a decision. I’ve worked collaboratively, and yet I’ll take the disappointment from which ever camp is feeling disappointed that it is my decision when we put it forward. I am attempting to do so by the end of term and yet imagine that I’ll need to do work over the holidays and send out a message in the first week back of Term 3. It is a big decision, and I’d like to take the time to work through it well.

Reading over the Holidays

With a big section above, I’ll leave an in-depth discussion of reading to a sequence 5 part story next term. We’ll use the Scarborough’s Rope Model that we have previously discussed (below) to talk about Word Recognition, Fluency, Language Comprehension, our screening, tracking and Tiers of Instruction, and finally our theory of improvement for our school and our Driver Diagram. There’s a lot to share.

But for now, can you all please do us a favour and in the wintery break – read a lot! If you need or would like more books from the library, please come and chat with Tina. Especially our bigger students who might like another novel or two.

And all please remember that your local library puts on a lot of great events and activities over the break… and you can get books out too while you’re there!

We know that some of our students have a small regression in reading skills each holiday break. If you can help us to reduce or remove this, we will go a long way in Term 3 to cementing our yearly gains. No other requests from us… just read, please! Oh, and relax and recover, ready for a big term of learning in Term 3.

I hope that you all have a very restful, enjoyable and safe break. See you over the next two days or next term!

Courtney.

Election Day BBQ

The School Association is looking for volunteers to help out with an Election Day BBQ on the last weekend of the school holidays. Considering the number of people who put forward their hopes of fundraising for camps – we are hopeful that a number of you will come forward to give up an hour or two of your time to help support what we already do (camps, bush school and band program). So, if you love what our school offers, and hope for all we do to keep on keeping on, please think about chipping in to help at events like the BBQ. There’s no kids' sport on this weekend! Please get in touch with the office and let them know when you might be available between 9am and 4pm on Saturday July 19. If you are not free but might have other time available, then let us know about that too – we might have a job or two on the Friday.

Cake Stall for Election Day

Can you bake? If so, would you mind whipping something up in the last week of the holidays for us to serve up at the Election Day BBQ? Please email or call the office, or text on 0418 790 262 and let us know how many plates, bags and stickers you need. One set for each item please!

All goods need to come in on a paper plate, bagged/sealed up and with a sticker with an ingredients list. The Team here on Saturday 19 July will cost things out and set them up for sale.

If you could drop things off to the school office on either the last Thursday or Friday of the holidays, that would be great. We have fridge space to look after things if needed!

SRC Pyjama Day Fundraiser

Thank you to all the students and families who supported the Pyjama Day fundraiser last Friday. We raised $680 which will go to support the charity “Archie’s 100” which helps raise money for research and patient care at the Royal Hobart Hospital’s Neonatal and Paediatric Intensive Care Unit.

Free Access to StoryBox Library for Tasmanian Families!

Tasmanian primary school students now have free access to StoryBox Library - a fun and educational digital library you can enjoy at home!

StoryBox Library is a subscription-based website and app featuring Australian storytellers reading hundreds of much-loved children’s books. It’s a fantastic way to nurture your child’s love of reading and support their literacy development.

With features like Read-Along, Closed Captions, Auslan stories, and engaging audio-visual content, StoryBox Library is designed to be inclusive and accessible for all children.

How to Access: 1. Visit www.storyboxhub.com or search “Story Box Library” on your device’s app store.

1. Click LOG IN at the top right of the homepage.
2. Enter the school username and password (provided below)
3. Start exploring hundreds of stories – Anytime, anywhere!

School Login Details

Username: CambridgeReads
Password: CambridgeReads

Please visit the DECYP website or StoryBox website for more information.

Ten Year Anniversary of the School Health Nurse Program

Over the past decade, Tasmania’s School Health Nurse Program (SHNP) has grown from a local pilot into a statewide initiative, delivering vital health and wellbeing services to students across primary, secondary, and specialist schools.

The nurses don’t just show up for the day-to-day stuff. They have been there through bushfires, during COVID, and amongst the rise in vaping. They have jumped in with infection control advice, support for immunisation programs, and helped guide schools through tough health conversations. They have also built relationships with all kinds of services—from Public Health and Youth Health to partners like the Cancer Council and QUIT Tasmania.

And they don’t just stop at preventing illness. Nurses run empowering programs like Love Bites, Peaceful Kids, Inside Out 4 Kids, SoSAFE, and even Rainbow Kids Yoga—helping kids grow up strong, confident, and connected.

Our School Health Nurse is Emma Atkinson who has been with the Program for the last nine years. Thank you to Emma and all the other School Health Nurses who work with a whole lot of passion, leadership, and genuine care!

New Canteen Menu

There have been a few price changes on the Canteen Menu. Please click on the link below to see the updated menu.

Lost Property

Please encourage your children to check the Lost Property if they are missing any clothes, lunch boxes etc. Un-named items will be discarded in the holidays.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Blair A in 5/6A who has been selected for the Tasmanian State Cricket Talent Pathway Squad. Well done, Blair.

Let’s Celebrate!

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