Dear Families
Yesterday we held our first assembly for our whole school for a number of years. It was great to see so many people under one roof. Congratulations to this semester’s SRCs who received their badges on the day. We will hold another whole school assembly in the middle of next term.
Next term, there will be Year level assemblies in the Stella Maris Room, that families will be invited to. These assemblies will be where the Year level will celebrate the work that is happening across their cohort.
NAPLAN
Congratulations to the Year 3 & 5 students who have begun their National testing this week. The NAPLAN testing has been brought forward this year in the hope that results are available to schools much earlier. The timing is interesting, as the publicly available results for 2022, have only just been released. When watching the news there has been a lot of doom and gloom in the reporting as SA results and many national results have gone backwards… well not here at Star of the Sea!
For the record…
We are in the top 10 in Catholic Schools across the State for the first time
Almost all the results for our School have increased on last year’s excellent performance
Compared to schools in our area we have again increased the gap between our schools across most areas of the testing
We have had enormous growth in numeracy
We are well above the CESA SA and Australian averages in almost all areas
This comes as no surprise to us, who closely monitor our students with screening testing several times a year. This data is interrogated so that we can adjust our teaching to the needs of our students, particularly to those performing beyond or below the expected year level. Many thanks to our staff who have done an incredible amount of work over the last three years in this area as the results speak for themselves.
For those students with the greatest needs, we produce Personalised Plans for Learning, an integral part of the National Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD), the process whereby the Australian Government funds extra support for students. The process used by our staff and the time they put into this area has resulted in a huge increase in support for our students. When I arrived at the school, we had 7 Education Support Officers working across the classes, today we have 25!
NCCD
Currently teachers are putting in a lot of work in the background collecting information for the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). In our school nearly 100 students are included in this process.
The NCCD is a collection that counts:
the number of school students receiving an adjustment or ‘help’ due to disability
the level of adjustment they are receiving to access education on the same basis as other students.
Students are counted in the NCCD if they receive ongoing adjustments at school due to disability. This ‘help’ allows them to access education on the same basis as a child without disability. The NCCD uses the definition of disability in the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.
Funding from the Australian Government for students with disability is based on the NCCD through the student with disability loading.
Students with disability who are counted in the top three levels of the NCCD (extensive, substantial and supplementary) attract the loading. Funding is based on a per-student amount at each of the three levels of additional support. The amount of the loading reflects the level of support students with disability need to participate fully in school, with higher funding for those who need higher levels of support.
An adjustment is an action to help a student with disability take part in education on the same basis as other students.
Adjustments can be made across the whole school (eg ramps into school buildings). They can be in the classroom (eg adapting teaching methods). They can also be for individual student need (eg providing personal care support).
The school assesses the needs of each student with disability. The school provides adjustments in consultation with the student and/or their parents, guardians and carers.
Schools must make reasonable adjustments if needed. The Disability Standards for Education 2005 define ‘reasonable adjustment’ as an adjustment that balances the interests of all parties affected.
Schools identify which students will be counted in the NCCD. They base their decisions on the following:
• adjustments provided for the student (after consultation with the student and/or their parents, guardians and carers)
• the school team’s observations and professional judgements
• any medical or other professional diagnoses
• other relevant information.
School Principals must ensure that information for the NCCD is accurate.
PUPIL FREE DAYS (PFD)
A tradition in our school is to hold these valuable professional learning days at the start of terms 2, 3 & 4
TERM 2, Monday May 1st will be a PFD.
Our first PFD of the year is devoted to Faith Formation. Our school motto of “Open hearts, open minds” has much history behind it. It was over ten years ago that the school staff worked together on this motto. Today, we have more staff that were not here ten years ago than we have staff that were! We are going to use the day to “break open” this motto, the theology, the links to our charism and the practices in our school that link back to the motto.
PARENT TEACHER INTERVIEWS
Just a reminder that the next formal opportunity to meet with teachers will be early next term (weeks 2 & 3), when we hold our Parent Teacher Interviews. If your child has a PPL this will be emailed to you beforehand and the meeting will be a discussion around the adjustments for this year.
SEMESTER 1 REPORTS
As outlined in last week’s newsletter our new School Reports are going to be a much-slimmed-down version compared to what we are used to, as we move to CESA’s SEQTA reports. Due to the changes we are currently working with teachers on continuous reporting and you may notice a change in this area (on Seesaw or with books that come home). This also makes the Parent Teacher Interviews and important time where teachers can share information about your child’s progress before the report comes home.
BUILDING
It looks like slow progress but we are still on target! We are towards the end of the ground work and the countdown is on for the big concrete pour, possibly around March 27 at this stage.
LAST DAY OF TERM – CASUAL CLOTHES
As is the tradition in our school the last day of every term is a casual clothes day. Families might like to make a donation to Project Compassion through the QKR app (maybe $5 for the whole family but this is a suggestion only).
Children will be dismissed at the usual time (3:05pm).
Regards
Damian Weeks