'I wasn't born to just teach. I was born to inspire others, to change people for the better and never give up: even when faced with challenges that seem impossible.'

Personally, I would like to commend and thank the wonderful staff at our school, who on a daily basis work and endeavour to provide our students with the best learning environment possible. This was highlighted by the Cyclic Review panel on Wednesday. Dedicated, committed and with a great sense of teamwork and fun, our staff serve our school community with pride, passion and purpose.

Thank you to the P&F for providing breakfast for our staff this morning in the Monsignor Downey Hall - it is greatly appreciated.

Our first Kindergarten Transition to School 2020 playgroup sessions start on Monday with 58 new students and parents. Over the course of the 8 sessions being held on a Monday and Thursday in the MD Hall, our new students, parents and teachers will have the opportunity to starting building the social and emotional connections needed for successful transition to school. It will be lots of fun for our new students and we are looking forward to providing our new families and their children with a positive beginning to life at our fantastic school.

On Wednesday, our Cyclic Review was held with panel members Mr Mark Raue, Mr Noel Henry and Mrs Kay Blundell from the Catholic Education Office, Wollongong. Students, staff and parents were also interviewed throughout the course of the day. The last Cyclic Review was held in 2014 and is implemented on a five-year cycle. It is essentially centred on three questions - Where have we been?, Where are we at? and Where are we headed into the future? The process was extremely positive and we would like to sincerely thank all members of our community who were involved.  A report will be drafted and then signed off by the Director of Schools, Mr Peter Turner. Once we have the report, the recommendations will be shared with the school community.

On Monday evening, we held our final Understanding Our Boys workshop with the theme being technology. Thank you to Mr Mark Woolley (Catholic Education Office, Wollongong) for sharing his expertise in this field, along with Sam Immens and Mrs Disibio for their continued support. The four Understanding Our Boys sessions have been a great success with many of the strategies and recommendations being implemented by both staff and parents.

Over the holidays, there was a number of building works that took place and we continue to upgrade our school resource base and infrastructure. This included the refurbishment of the Administration, Teacher Resource and Staff-room areas, along with external work on the south east and south west corners of the building. These changes have created more functional and practical workplaces for our staff and students.

In receiving our 2019 NAPLAN results, we were extremely pleased with outcomes in both Year 3 and Year 5. Our Year 3 cohort achieved their best results since 2009 across all areas which included Reading, Writing, Grammar/Punctuation and Numeracy. Year 5 made significant learning gains in the areas of Reading, Grammar/Punctuation and Numeracy from 2018. Our focus for 2019 will be a strategic approach to writing inclusive of Spelling and Grammar/Punctuation. For further information, please view the NAPLAN 2019 article below. 

Enjoy a senesational couple of weeks and please save the date for our Family Fun Day on Saturday 16 November.

Take care

Mr Brad Colquhoun