Kindy Academy
Kindy Academy started this week and we are now able to have 5 sessions with our 2021 Kindergarten students. On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of spending time with Mrs Everett, Mrs O’Brien and our new 2021 students and we had a fabulous time. We look forward to getting to know everyone over the next five weeks.
COVID-19 Revised guidelines
The NSW Department of Education has released new COVID- 19 guidelines from Thursday 12th November enabling us to have limited number of parents’ onsite for the end of year presentation day. I will communicate more information with the community once we have worked out how this can happen while still maintaining the strict COVID 19 physical distancing rules.
School Planning 2021-2024
The school has been delving deep into our data sources over the last month to evaluate where we are to enable us to write our 2021-2024 School Improvement Plan. We have analysed student( Years 4-6) and parent data ( 23 responses) from Tell Them From Me Surveys, teacher surveys from Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation focusing on What Works Best and external and internal student performance and attendance data to get a good picture of where we are at and areas that we need to improve moving forward. We greatly appreciate feedback from our school community and working together we will continue to make Blaxland Public School a great place to learn.
School Attendance
The analysis of our school wide attendance data has highlighted that the school’s percentage of students attending school greater that 90% of the time is an area of concern. Research has shown that regular missed days of school over time can have a negative impact on a child’s ability to achieve the expected levels of attainment. The resource attached below highlights the impact of missed days on student learning.
NAIDOC Week 8th November -15th November
Always Was, Always Will Be
Always Was, Always Will Be, recognises that First Nations people have occupied and cared for this continent for over 65,000 years. We are spiritually and culturally connected to this country.
This country was criss-crossed by generations of brilliant Nations.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were Australia’s first explorers, first navigators, first engineers, first farmers, first botanists, first scientists, first diplomats, first astronomers and first artists.
Australia has the world’s oldest oral stories. The First Peoples engraved the world’s first maps, made the earliest paintings of ceremony and invented unique technologies. They built and engineered structures - structures on Earth - predating well-known sites such as the Egyptian Pyramids and Stonehenge.
Debating Team
Congratulations to our School Debating Team for excelling in their inaugural year of the Premier’s Debating Competition. The topic for our debate was “That we should ban all sports involving animals.” We were the affirmative team. Despite some wonderful points and excellent debating skills we were beaten by Newcastle East PS. We are very proud of Jude, Mia, James and Sascha. 664 schools participated in the Premier’s Debating Competition and we made in through to the final 64 teams.
