Principal’s Report
I hope you’ve had a great week. The weather has been mighty chilly, wet and windy at times this week – winter has most definitely arrived!
Changes to Mathematics Reporting
On Thursday next week we will be sending out Semester 1 reports via Compass. You will notice the Mathematics score will look a little different than normal.
The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) recently published its revised mathematics curriculum, and all government schools are using the Mathematics Curriculum 2.0 to report student achievement against the updated standards.
On your child’s previous report, the teacher reported against three strands of the achievement standards for mathematics – Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability. Under the Mathematics Curriculum 2.0, your child’s teacher will report against the achievement standard as a whole, providing a single, aggregated score.
As the achievement standards reported on have changed, the first time you receive a report under the Mathematics Curriculum 2.0, it will only show achievement and not progress. For all reports after this semester, progress will be shown against the single achievement standard.
The VCAA made these changes to help teachers plan their teaching and learning programs in mathematics, giving them more flexibility to support students to link ideas within mathematics and also with other curriculum areas.
For further information, refer to the Department’s policy on Reporting Student Achievement and Progress Foundation to 10.
Attendance at School
You may recall in last year’s newsletters I updated the community about our school attendance data. The target for our School Strategic Plan is to decrease the percentage of students with 20+ days absence from 46% in 2022 to 30% in 2027. In 2023, we achieved this target by having 27% of students with 20+ days absence. However, despite the messaging to the community about the importance of regular attendance at school, the percentage increased last year to 36%. This equates to 190 children who missed more than 20 days, with 75 children missing 30 or more days.
I hope you agree that this must improve. We want your children to be given the best opportunity to succeed at school, and their best chance to improve is by attending school every day.
We understand that there are times when your child will need to miss school because of illness. The best place for an unwell child is at home. If your child is sick, please ensure you let us know by adding an Attendance Note in Compass with the reason being Medical/Illness. This helps us when we’re looking at our attendance data because we know the absence is unavoidable and for a valid reason.
I also recognise that family holidays create life-long memories, but to ensure minimal disruption to their education, please consider scheduling family holidays outside of school time. This also goes for medical and dental appointments – try your best to organise these at the end or start of the day so your child can be at school for most of the day. If your child is well enough to attend school but is worried about friendships or schoolwork, please encourage them to come to school. Avoiding school can make these feelings worse and can create a negative pattern of behaviour. We have a great team of teachers and support staff who can help your child work manage their anxiety and build resilience.
Speaking of family holidays, I realise that flights and accommodation “sky-rocket” over the school holiday period, costing families a lot more money than it would if you took a holiday during the school term. If your family has scheduled a holiday during the school term, it is Department policy to let me know, whether that be in-person, over the phone or email. I can then notify you of my approval for your child to be absent for a family holiday, which means your child’s teacher can design a Student Absence Learning Plan.
Our teachers and admin staff will be tracking attendance more closely next semester. Along with the automated text messages you will receive for unexplained absences, the office will also be calling to follow up any unexplained absences in the afternoon or the following day. If your child is away for three or more days, or 5 days in the term, you will receive a phone call from either your child’s teacher or a member of the leadership team to see if there’s anything we can do to support your child in attending school regularly.
I hope that by sharing responsibility for school attendance, we can get achieve our Strategic Plan target again this year, which will then give your child the best chance to succeed at school.
Enjoy your weekend!
Mat Anderton
Principal
