Dear St John the Apostle community, 

Thank you to Mrs Alcock, Ms Macdonald and the library team that includes Ms Levi, Ms Monaghan and Mrs Tidy for their preparation and enthusiasm in celebrating Book Week. Thank you for creating the opportunity for students to listen to guest author Sami Bayly and be introduced to and celebrate a love of reading and books.

Thank you also to families who helped their child prepare for the Book Week dress up parade in the morning (I know how stressful and fun it can be) and to all of the teachers who provided laughter for students in the staff play.

The theme this year is 'read, grow, inspire' and staff have been sharing books that have been transformative in their lives. Books that have had impact on who they are today.

One of my favourite books is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. It is a long book punctuated by a lot of French language, which I have no idea how to read nor pronounce, and lengthy descriptions of Paris and the battle of Waterloo. It is so long and dense that I had to put it down half way through to have a break for a few months before picking it up again to finish it. Despite this, it is a book about deep love between people, self-sacrifice and the indisputable power of forgiveness. Reading it in my early twenties I learnt a great deal from this book that I carry today and, having read the entire story in fullness, I also have a very deep appreciation of the music and story in the film and stage adaptations. It has shaped a part of who I am.

What books have shaped you? They needn't be long, nor dramatic, they may have just have touched you deeply, for some reason, at a particular time in your life. I encourage you to read to or with your children and help them find books that help shape who they are. They will only ever be grateful for you doing this and will likely go on to love reading as adults.

Explicit Instruction and the impact on NAPLAN

The nation's NAPLAN results were released this week and the ACT, and particularly Catholic schools, featured in some reports as we are now beginning to see the significant positive impact that our system's focus on explicit instruction in English and Maths is having in our schools.

At our own school we are seeing the first of many excellent results for our work. This year we have experinced a significant increase in the number of high achieving students in Reading and Spelling in Years 3 and 5, two areas where we have worked very hard to introduce explicit instruction across our whole school. 

NAPLAN isn't the most important indicator of student achievement. We have many forms of assessment throughout the school year, to help us monitor and support student learning. For us, NAPLAN confirms where we know our students are succeeding and where we know we need to focus more of our teaching.

We're pleased with our NAPLAN results this year. Every year we have been steadily improving the results of our school and we continue to move forward thanks to the leadership of the Executive staff, the hard work of our teachers and the focussed support by our inclusion staff. I'd like to thank them all for their continued commitment to excellent teaching at St John the Apostle Primary School.

Thank you to all of our families. We love working in partnership with you to help your children grow and become all they can be.

Matthew Garton

Principal