Dear St John the Apostle families,

Teachers have been enjoying the many Parent-Teacher Interviews being held at the moment. They have appreciated the kind words of thanks they have received in the midst of the conversations about each child.

I would like to thank all of the teachers for their commitment to our families in providing this opportunity to talk with parents at such a busy time of year. They are a very committed and dedicated staff who do their very best to support every student in their care. Thank you to all the parents for also finding that time to connect. It is by working together that your child has the greatest opportunity to grow at school.

Annual Survey

Early in Term 3 we conducted our annual Parent, Staff and Student Surveys. We used this data as part of our recent strategic planning process. Every organisation and school has great strengths and areas to develop further. Your feedback is always welcome and helpful in providing a focus for determining what to continue doing and what to focus on next in improving. I would like to share the Parent Survey results with you:

What does this tell me?

Parents were asked to express their satisfaction in response to the statements outlined. Their responses were scored as follows:

The average score for each statement is colour coded for quick reference:

After looking through comments and examining staff and student survey results, we identified the following main themes:

• ‘Community’ is still a very, very important part of our identity. Parents, staff and students overall feel a sense of belonging and commitment to St John the Apostle Primary School.
• There is a strong understanding that ‘care’ is an experience that is valued highly in our school. Students strongly identify that they are encouraged to care for others. Parents generally feel that the school ‘cares’ for their child from the Front Office through to the classroom.
• Overall there are a lot of  positive response to how the school focuses on and supports positive behaviour. Any concerns expressed tended to be based on perceptions around one or two specific year levels/situations. We recognise that perceptions are important and will consider ways we may be able to communicate and clarify information regarding more often about how we manage behaviour.
• 'Communication' was generally considered positively, particularly at a whole school level, with suggestions regarding communicating more often the strategic directions of the school and greater consistency between teachers communicating with parents using apps such as Seesaw. We're looking forward next year to having the full functionality of Seesaw at our disposal after using the lite version this year.
• Our achievement data along with our parent, staff and student survey results all point to excellent growth in spelling and reading for many of our students. This is a great outcome for our work in implementing Daily 5, Sounds~Write and intervention groups. We now want to build our school’s capacity to ensure our highest achieving students have the exact same opportunity to be challenged and grow as much as all other students. While our data suggests they experience consistently good growth, we know that with more focus we can help them grow even more to meet their potential.

Thank you to all of our parents who completed the survey. Your feedback each year is always read and considered in celebrating good work and determining strategies for improvement.

Congratulations Emily!

This morning Emily Thexton was awarded the Colour My World Arts Scholarship, also known as the Sue Ferguson Arts Scholarship. Sue Ferguson was a teacher at St John the Apostle from 1990 to 2014 when she passed away. She loved music, singing and the Arts and her favourite year level was Year 2. 

Each year Doug Ferguson, husband of Sue, provides this scholarship to a Year 2 student in her name. The student selected is one who shows a great interest in the Arts both at school and outside of school. There were quite a number of worthy students who applied and had interests and experience in the Arts. Emily will be using the scholarship to develop her love for dancing.

This morning Emily was presented the award from Doug and Sue's son James and and we were also treated to a ballet performance from last year's winner, Aisling Straffon who performed a piece from a french ballet.

Let's keep finishing strong! Looking for and celebrating the best in each other. We've all earned it this year.