Dear Parents/Carers,

Welcome back to Term 4, usually our busiest term in many ways. Keeping everyone focused on the learning, whilst at the same time completing the necessary planning for next year can often be a huge challenge for everyone.  I thought it was a timely opportunity to share with everyone our NAPLAN performance for 2022. Whilst, despite COVID being such a huge challenge over the past three years, last year’s 2021 NAPLAN results were still some of the best we had achieved over the past three years. Unfortunately our results don’t reflect the same level of growth and improvement in 2022. Below is a short summary of the challenges the results reflect:

Results for each of the five NAPLAN assessment domains of Reading, Writing, Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation, and Numeracy, covering Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, are reported on a common scale. Each domain has a mean score of 500.

Mean Scores For NAPLAN

When I initially looked at our results I obviously found it a concern, especially as we had made such excellent growth and improvement over the previous four years, including the first year of COVID (but those results would have been largely unaffected by the lockdowns and absenteeism). The staff have reviewed the results and we are fully aware of the need to continue to provide explicit teaching in problem solving and strategy reflection in Mathematics as well as focusing on what constitutes a quality piece of writing.  We will establish two goals focusing on these areas during 2023. 

It is also very important to look at the performance of our like schools in the area, and like us, they too had experienced a decline in results across the board in 2022.  In addition, the System diocesan averages also reflected the same concern. One then needs to consider the following challenges that COVID has presented us with to fully understand the context that the results were created in. During COVID the level of absenteeism from school both for staff and students increased exponentially. The data below clearly outlines this. Naturally if the students aren’t at school they can’t learn. Secondly, remote learning is an artificial learning environment that could never provide the same quality of education that face to face teaching can do. In addition, State Government health requirements meant that when children had COVID they had to stay away from school for seven days, initially if you were a close contact, you also had to isolate, so when it went through a family, this could have been considerably more than seven days. Teachers/staff were also required to isolate and not come to work during this period as well, which meant your child may not have had their teacher teaching them every day because of the same public health orders. This is another significant factor that also needs to be considered when reflecting on the above results. I am of the belief, as stated above, there are many factors behind such a decline in our NAPLAN performance for 2022.

The data below identifies the challenges of non attendance at school during the past two years:

Remote Learning Average  2020/2021

Average Student Absences 2020 - 2022

In Summary

As can be seen from the above data, this has obviously had a huge impact on student learning at St Paul’s. With your help, we can turn this around largely by having the students at school more regularly. As these results are an average, some students were considerably better, whilst others were even worse!  Attending school every day makes learning easier for your child and helps children build and maintain friendships with other children.

Finally, it is a condition of enrolment that you send your child to school every day.  Do not keep your child away from school for any of the following: birthdays, shopping, minding other children, routine check ups or haircuts, minor family events or because they’re tired. Medical and other health appointments for your child should be made either before or after school or during school holidays where possible. Also, a reminder that all absences must be explained. Once absences become a concern, the next step is to establish an attendance plan for the child. If all attempts by schools and Systems to improve attendance have been unsuccessful, principals are legally obligated to report such matters to Community Services.

I would like you to share this with your children so that they understand how important school attendance is.

As a school, our goal for term 4 is to lift the level of attendance at school considerably.  Naturally this calls upon our parents to work closely with your child’s teacher to turn this unsatisfactory data around.  

Hopefully with the relaxing of the Public Health Orders attendance at school will improve. Apologies for presenting such a negative picture in the first newsletter for term 4, however, we obviously have a problem in this area that needs to be addressed as it is impacting on student learning.

Go gently,

Michael Reardon
Principal

Principal Awards

Congratulations to the following students who have recently received a Principal Award. 

Athena Atlantis, Amelia Dominelli, Hunter Begovich, Ivy Russell, Alanna Dominelli, Chloe Gray, Mia Mikhail, Isabella Castellano, Annabelle Duggan, Zygmund Costelloe, Tijana Vukovic, Holly Henin, Hudson Wallace, Lavitta Vassallo, Nicholas Macri, Ivy Russell, Rocco Cilia, August Booth, Jax Leckey, Evangelene Bustos, Charlotte Racca, Heath Kemp, Aailiyah Linden, Emily Croke, Jonathan Sparkes-Howarth, Mia McCudden, Chloe Gray, Mia Mikhail, Monique Racca,  Isabella Castellano.

Staff Professional Learning Day

The St Paul’s teaching staff recently engaged in a staff professional learning day. Teacher professional learning helps teachers gain insight into and knowledge of their craft. It encourages the development of new ways of thinking about content and new approaches to teaching. This will substantially affect student achievement over a sustained period of time. Changes in teaching practice and improved student achievement need to be observed and/or measured.

In implementing changed practice, teachers acquire new knowledge, modify their existing beliefs and attitudes in relation to their teaching and sustain that change over time. This change in teaching practice needs to correlate strongly with the improvement of specified student outcomes.

The focus of the professional learning day was engaging with the new K-2 English and Mathematics syllabus which schools are mandated to use in 2023. Teachers studied the syllabus to:

• understand the new curriculum content and structure
• understand where to look for and find key information related to the NSW Primary Curriculum
• be able to apply understanding of the new curriculum to programming and planning
• be able to navigate and personalise the programming experience with the new digital curriculum.

It is encouraging to note that the new K - 2 syllabus will finally reflect the research and evidence based teaching that the St Paul’s teachers have tirelessly worked with over the past 5 years to explicitly teach phonics and teach reading using decodable readers and moving away from ‘reading levels’.

Below is an outline of curriculum reform for English and Mathematics. In 2024 the curriculum reform will continue with a new syllabus for English and Mathematics for years 3 - 6.

School Photos - Friday, 28 October 2022

School photo day is Friday, 28 October 2022. Group and portrait photographs can be purchased by following the link www.advancedlife.com.au and enter online code:

EPN 197 PN1

Sibling Photos - Don’t forget to pre-order your sibling photos online up to 24 hours before photo day.

Be safe, respectful and Responsible -
Coming back to school...

As the students are returning to school after our 2 week holidays, we will be focussing on re-establishing strong routines within the classrooms and across the playgrounds. This will help to maintain an environment that is conducive to learning.

Teachers will take the time to revisit and re-teach the classroom and playground routines and expectations to the students.

Students will continue to unpack the weekly target and then journal on something that was positive for them during their school week. 

The target that we are focusing on for the first two weeks is ‘At St Paul's, we are respectful’.  This is done by:

• Practising the classroom expectations matrix - these are respectful behaviours
• Role playing respectful behaviours in the classroom and on the playground
• Looking and listening to the person who is speaking 
• Using kind words and good manners
• Raise your hand to speak
• Don’t talk back to the teacher
• Discussing consequences of not being respectful in the classroom and on the playground
• Praising students who are being respectful.
• Redirecting students in the classroom who are not showing respect and explaining why this is. Tell them the correct choice of behaviour to display next time. For example, a student is running in the classroom. Say to the child: ‘This is not respectful because… . You need to…
• Giving tokens to students on the playground who are respectful.
• Following the classroom/playground correction sequence for students who are not following the target.

Scholastic Book Club Loop Orders Issue 7

This will be the second last catalogue for the year. The catalogue was handed out last week. Book Club Issue 7 Loop orders must be placed before Wednesday, 26 October 2022. Thank you for supporting our school library with your purchases. 

Changes to Term 4's Library Days 

School Managed iPad Program for 2023

As you were informed earlier this year, next year, your children will be part of the School Managed iPad Program. We have been advised to wait until Apple's new product release (October) before we confirm which iPad model we will be purchasing for the 2023 Year 5 cohort. Below are the 2022 costs. The total cost will be split across two payments, 1st instalment 2023 and 2nd instalment, 2024. Should you leave the school before the iPad is paid in full, you will charged the 2nd instalment at that time.

(Prices subject to increase for the 2023 school year)

Stage 3 Public Speaking Competition 

During Term 3, students in Stage 3 prepared and presented speeches to their peers in preparation for the CDF Public Speaking Competition. This week, the top three students in both years 5 and 6 will be presenting their speeches to the stage, and a final student from each grade will be selected to represent St Paul’s at the Regional Final CDF Public Speaking Competition. 

St Paul’s is extremely fortunate to be hosting the Northern Regional finals this Thursday, 20 October 2022. On this day students from 14 schools across the diocese will present their speeches. Students from Stage 3 will be given the opportunity to view these speeches during the day. As a result of these finals, the top three students from the Northern Region will compete in the grand finals.

We wish the selected students from Year 5 and 6 the best of luck in the competition.

Last Wednesday, The Christmas Art Exhibition and Competition was held at the Wollongong Art Gallery. The students enjoyed the evening and we are thrilled to say two entries (Audrey & Eva) were selected as finalists to go through to the next stage.

They will now be entered in to the Sydney and Bathurst Diocese Competition to be held next month.

Congratulation to Audrey & Jade (year 5)  and Eva (Year 6).