Dear Parents, Carers, Staff and Students,

This week we enter the third week of Lent. Tomorrow we celebrate the feast day of St. Patrick (March 17) and on Sunday we celebrate the feast of St. Joseph (March 19). For all people, these two great saints that we honour this week are examples of ordinary people doing good things for other people. St Joseph is especially important for the school of St Anthony’s, due to our connection to the Josephite Order who founded our school back in 1880. One of the great pleasures  of working in school is the opportunity, on a daily basis, to witness ordinary people following the example of Jesus and doing something good for someone else. They act in service and without question or hesitation, do what needs to be done for the sake of the other. As we honour them let us pray through their intercession that we, too, will listen to the call of God in our lives and follow Him as we are directed.

Open School Tours

On Tuesday we had over forty families join us for  a tour of the school. Mostly were new prospective kinder families seeking the opportunity to gain further understanding of what St Anthony’s has to offer as a Catholic school in the local area of Picton in order to seek enrolment for 2024. This key initiative that we implemented this week was led by our Year Six leaders. Can I say how proud I am of our Year Six leaders. The positive feedback from the families speaks highly of the fine young men and women that they are becoming and highlights, in a very real way, how they can live out the words of our school prayer, to be ‘in your service to do good for others’. 

NAPLAN

Students in Years 3 & 5  are presently engaged in completing their NAPLAN tests. There are many varied viewpoints on the use of Naplan data as an effective tool for measuring student performance. From my perspective, as a Principal of a primary school, Naplan has certainly not lived up to the well documented expectations that both State and Federal Educational said that it would deliver.

At a school level, Naplan can be used in several different ways. The use of Naplan student data to measure growth from one stage of learning to the next can be effective, if used with other forms of data to build a more detailed understanding of the students strengths and areas for further understanding. The challenge, when comparing growth, is that if it is used in isolation then the data is too narrow and can be used in the wrong context.

For me, Naplan can be best used to compare trend data over several years in order to build a greater understanding of our schools strengths in both literacy and numeracy, as well as those areas that need further development. When used in this way, the data can drive key Professional Development strategies for teachers and students.

Assessments have occurred on the following days:

Wednesday 15 March - Writing & Reading

Thursday 16 March  - Language Conventions

Monday 20 March - Numeracy 

Students who are absent on these days will be provided an opportunity to complete catch up tests before 25 March.

Take Care

Mr Justin Devlin

Principal