Dear Parents and Carers,

In line with our commitment to continue to improve how we communicate with our school community, I hope that you find our new newsletter website informative and effective in presenting the key events at St Anthony’s each week. I would like to acknowledge the work of Mrs Belinda Rae in setting up and developing this newsletter format. Belinda needs to be commended for the professional manner in which she has set up our newsletter.

I trust that each family has had a restful holiday break and I would like to take this opportunity to commend the students for the settled way in which they have returned to school this term. I would like to especially commend the students on how smart they look in returning to school in their winter uniform. In speaking to the students, I have reminded them about the importance in wearing their uniform with pride and making sure that it is accordance with our school uniform policy. This includes haircuts that need to be neat and tidy, and do not draw attention.

Each year the school sets clear strategic plans that focus on a number of important initiatives. The initiatives come from our School Review and Improvement plans and involve the following focus areas:

SRI Key Focus Areas

• 2:3 Reporting Student Achievement … Learning Progressions
• 2:4 Students & Their Learning … The effective use of ICT to improve student learning!
• 2:5 Pastoral Care … Teacher Wellbeing
• 3:1 Curriculum Provision … Challenging Maths Tasks
• 3:1 Curriculum Provision … Implementation of New Science Curriculum / Stem Learning
• 7:1 Innovation & Change… COMPASS / ONCE
• Sustainable Practices …. Google Programming / Assessment Framework / Environmental Stewardship

An example of how we implement these plans is how, over the past two days, each staff member has had the opportunity to attend a Professional Development Day focused on improving the use of ipad technology in the classroom. The key aspect of this professional learning is improving teacher skills in order to improve student learning.

I look forward to using this new newsletter format to continue to inform parents of the professional development opportunities we are providing the staff in order to focus on improving student learning.

Take Care

Mr Justin Devlin

Principal