Dear Families,

I hope all of the mothers, grandmothers, carers and women who contribute to the lives of our students had a wonderful day on Sunday. It was wonderful to see so many of you at the Muffins with Mum breakfast on Friday. A big thank you must go to the STA School Community Council for organising this great community event.

Our Community Council not only raise funds to buy resources for the school, they also organise community events such as the Muffins with Mum. Every member of the Community Council is a volunteer, meaning that they are not paid, so every dollar they raise, every cent you contribute through the SCC levy goes straight back into our community.

NAPLAN
Today students in Years 3 and 5 started NAPLAN. These tests essentially provide information for schools on literacy and numeracy and allows schools to identify strengths and weaknesses in the student cohort and broad trends across the school. We strive to ensure that it is as stress free as possible for the students and hope that the students endeavour to do their best in the different tests.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON - Staff Retreat
The St Thomas Aquinas staff will participate in a Spirituality Retreat this Friday evening and Saturday morning. This means most staff will leave at 3pm on Friday, with only a handful of senior staff members remaining behind to see off students. I ask that you support us with this by collecting your children by 3:15pm unless they are booked into OSHClub. If you know you will not be able to collect your child by this time I ask that you look into alternate arrangements including booking your child into OSHClub for Friday afternoon.

This retreat will give the staff an opportunity to break open our school theme Ask, Seek, Knock and to delve deeper into the charism of St Thomas Aquinas. I thank Mrs Skye McPadden and Fr Tom Thornton for their work on this.

REPORTING - Semester 1 2021
Catholic Education has been reviewing the current school reports and reporting process and, from this semester they will be in a different format. Our teaching team has begun the process of creating each child’s Semester 1 2021 report.

In Semester 1:

For Kindergarten students:

• Achievement in each subject will be reported using a four-point scale (Well Above Expectations, Above Expectations, Meeting Expectations and Working Towards Expectations)

For Year 1 to Year 6 students:

•  Academic grades for each subject using a five-point scale from A-E will be reported using the Australian Curriculum Achievement Standards

For all students:

• Strand Achievement will be reported in English, Mathematics, Humanities and Social Sciences, Health and Physical Education, and The Arts using a five-point scale (Excellent, High, Sound, Basic, Elementary)
• Engagement with Learning statements, which are taken directly from the Australian Curriculum, will provide specific information about your child’s Critical and Creative Thinking, and Personal and Social Responsibility, using a three-point scale (Beginning, Developing, Consistently) and
• Individual student comments will not be used in the Semester 1 Reports.

Dialogue is an important feature of reporting. The Semester Report in this format encourages parent engagement and conversation about student learning. We want the report to be the entry point for parent-teacher interviews where we can engage in a genuine conversation about your child’s strengths, challenges, effort, and areas for growth. Optional Parent-Teacher interviews will be held in Week 10 this term and booking can be made via the sZapp booking portal from week 8.

The new approach to Academic Reporting is a developing process. Further work will be undertaken in the coming months to determine how progress and achievement is best reported based on what we know to be important information about a student’s learning and progress.

ENROLMENTS
A reminder to all families that enrolments for 2022 are now open. If you have a child who will commence Preschool or Kindergarten in 2022, you will need to complete an online enrolment form, even if they are currently enrolled in our ELC. 

Preschool enrolment: https://staquinas.act.edu.au/elc-enrolment

Kindergarten enrolment: https://enrolments.staquinas.act.edu.au/act-primary-enrol

If you know of families who are considering enrolling their child at St Thomas Aquinas next year, please let them know of our Open Days, today and Thursday, 20 May between 4:00 - 5:30pm.

CHANGES TO ELC
Some of you may be aware of changes to Catholic Early Learning Centres. Last week, Director of Catholic Education, Mr Ross Fox released a letter to all current ELC families, outlining these changes. I want to assure all families that the high quality preschool education, delivered by highly experienced and qualified Early Childhood Teachers and Educators, will not change. The changes are essentially administrative and designed to provide consistency across the System and make all centres more sustainable moving forward. I have attached Mr Fox’s letter for your reference.

God Bless

 
Leah Taylor
Principal