The Evatt Eagle - Issue 5

A big thank you to all our community for a wonderful term 1 of 2021. We hope everyone has a restful and safe break. Please remain COVID safe and keep up to date at https://www.covid19.act.gov.au/community/travel if you are choosing to travel outside of the ACT.

Take care.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!

At the beginning of the year all families were given information about 2021 voluntary contributions and stationery. Thank you to the families who have already made any payments. So far we have received $8,445.00 towards our voluntary contribution fund and 32% of students have paid for their stationery/book packs.

We encourage you to make these payments if you have not done so this year. The students are using the quality resources that we have sourced that they need for their educational experiences using the anticipated book pack money.

As a reminder, the goal of the voluntary contributions this year will be to support our much anticipated new PA system in the hall.

If you have not yet made this contribution the link is below

2021 Voluntary Contributions and Stationery (book packs)

Felicity Toohey, Executive Teacher

EVATT SCHOOL BOARD

School Board Appointments

I'm pleased to announce two positions on the Evatt School Board have been filled:

Deborah Bultitude, appointed to a Staff member position
Kimberly Ingram, appointed to a Parent member position.

Both positions have been appointed for a term of two years.

Congratulations to Deborah and Kimberly, I look forward to working with you over the coming years.

Michael Hatswell,
Principal.

COMMUNITY CONSULTATION

Evatt Primary School engages in community consultation before undertaking any major changes. Below are current opportunities to provide your thoughts on key changes suggested at Evatt Primary School. These 2 x opportunities for feedback will close at the end of the school holidays 18/04/2021. A big thank you to everyone who has already had their say.

School Logo Update

Evatt Primary School is currently looking into updating our school logo. The Wedge-Tail eagle is firmly embedded within our school identity since it was adopted as the emblem in 1984. There is no intention to replace this. In our early consultation with staff, students and community members, there is a general consensus that our school logo could be modernised and softened to better reflect the school and its community.

There are some important considerations we need to consider.

Uniforms: Almost all our school uniforms include our current school logo. There would be no expectations on families to purchase new school uniforms if a change was to happen. New uniform orders would include the updated logo and students are able to wear their existing uniforms until families decide to replace them. The school would also look into 'rebranding' options such as iron on patches that would be at no cost to families.

Signage: School signage and branding would need to be updated to include the new school logo. This would include the front of the school sign, general front office signage and our sporting house flags. Many of these signs are reaching their end of life and would need to be updated soon regardless.

We would appreciate all families filling out this short survey in regards to changing our school logo.

School Logo Survey

Report Comments

We are currently reviewing the way we report feedback to parents/carers on student learning. Student reports are one way ACT public schools inform parents about their children’s learning. Reports are provided to parents at the end of Semesters 1 and 2 of each school year. Over the past few years, reports have undergone large changes as we have moved to a standardised template across the ACT.

In addition to A-E grades for each key learning area, the end-of-semester reports provide parents with an assessment of their children’s achievement against the Achievement Standards in the Australian Curriculum for each subject studied on a 5 point scale.

An example of an achievement standard from the Year 5 Humanities and Social Science Curriculum is: Identifies and describes the interconnections between people and the human and environmental characteristics of places, and between components of environments

This in itself provides a highly detailed summary of student's progress throughout the year. The Year 5 curriculum has over 80 achievement standards, and with an average class size of 24, this is close to 2000 individual achievement standards teachers need to assess each year. This is a mandatory component across the ACT.

Another component of the school report is the report comments. These look different from school to school. Currently, Evatt Primary School provides a comment for English, Maths and a general comment. When surveying teachers on the workload associated with these comments, on average, teachers spend 40 hours per semester on writing student comments. Many schools have transitioned to "report comment banks", which provide standardised pre-written comments for teachers to select from. If we were to maintain comments within our reports, we would most likely transition to this format.

We're currently seeking feedback from our community on the value of report comments in today's day and age, and exploring alternative options that might replace these. This might be a combination of:

Parent requested goal setting meetings at the end of each semester
Formal report comments only providing strategies for improvement for English & Maths
Continued use of Seesaw to share student learning (with teachers having greater capacity to post more frequently)

We would appreciate all families filling out this short survey in regards to report comments.

Report Comment Survey