I trust everyone had an enjoyable time over the summer, doing all the things that ‘fill your buckets’ and are as enthusiastic as I am about 2024 at Havenview Primary School.  Our entire school community has made an incredibly positive start to the year. Our students returned after the holidays with big smiles and have settled in beautifully to school life again. So, thank you to our parents and carers for your help in supporting this transition back to school. The smoothness of the return to school life after the holidays, and the joy on your children’s faces is a credit to you - our ever-supportive parents and carers, as well as our staff. What a great community, Havenview Primary!

Whilst our students started back on the 8^th of February our staff have been hard at work for some time preparing our school for a new year of learning. With some updated classrooms and spaces many of our teachers have spent a lot of their holiday time in the school moving and setting up to ensure a smooth start to the year. I take this opportunity to thank them for their enthusiasm and willingness to give of their time, as well as their patience – as with any rebuild, patience is a necessity. 

I will take this opportunity to welcome Mrs Jess Blackwell to the team, as our Quality Teaching Coach and Literacy Intervention Leader. As well as Mrs Bronte Byard and Mrs Simone McCoy who have joined us as the 3-4 and 5-6 teachers, respectively. Although only being on the team for a short period of time, I am already impressed with the professionalism and commitment of these teachers and look forward to seeing how our students benefit from their input.

You will note a few changes this year, one of them being a change to break times. We are currently trialling a swap of eating and play times. Students are going out to play at 10:30 (recess) and 12:30 (lunch) and returning to their classroom to eat, after their play time. Additionally, in an endeavour to provide the best learning environments for our students, this year we have created a 7^th class, which has enabled us to keep class sizes low. 

Our first LiFT activity and Welcome BBQ was a hit! Thank you to all the families that took time out of their days to attend and colour their hand! Please be aware that if you did not attend your child will come home with a ‘hand’ for you to colour in and return to the school. These hands will be displayed in the school symbolise how ‘everyone BELONGS at HPS!’ So, a gentle reminder … please bring your  ‘hands’ back to school where they BELONG!

A focus for our school this year will be attendance. Last year we had an overall attendance of 88.6% with 54% (69) of our students attending above 90% (missing less than 1 in 10 days). This year we are aiming high with a goal for overall attendance of 92% and a target of having 70% of our students attending over 90% of the time.  Research shows the building blocks for a great education begin with students coming to school each and every day. If students miss school regularly, they miss out on learning the fundamental skills that will set them up for success in the later years of school.

There is no safe number of days for missing school – each day a student misses puts them behind and can affect their educational outcomes. Each missed day is associated with progressively lower achievement in numeracy, writing and reading. Attendance patterns are established early – a child regularly missing days in Kindergarten or in the early years of school will often continue to miss classes in the later years, and receive lower test scores than their classmates. Research also shows that those students who do not attend school regularly will be impacted negatively throughout their life. As such, unless your child is unwell – please help us to support them aspire to a great future by attending every day.

On that note, we want to share that our school has a number of initiatives in place to help students at school including Breakfast Club (held daily in the Kookaburra Café); the provision of fruit and vegetables that are available in classes during the day; and special lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Additionally, we have facilities available to wash and dry school clothes as needed. We fully understand some families may be impacted by the cost-of-living crisis and ask that you contact the school should this be causing a barrier to your child/ren’s attendance – as we are here to help. Additionally, classroom teachers or the leadership team will be contacting parents of students with concerning attendance from previous years to try and work together to improve attendance.

Finally, a reminder that next Friday (23^rd February) is our Athletics Carnival, which in the event of rain will have a back-up day (being Friday 1^st March). A separate letter with further information regarding the Athletics Carnival will be out this week.