Welcome back

02-Oct-2020

Welcome Back 🙂

It is with great excitement and much joy that we can confirm that ALL of our students will be returning to face to face learning on Monday 12 October. It’s certainly been a long wait and our staff are delighted to be getting back to regular teaching and seeing our students at school.

It has been an extraordinary effort by every member of our school community to get to this point and we cannot wait to roll our sleeves back up and get to work back in our classrooms. We thank you for your support and acknowledge and appreciate the tough and difficult work you have undertaken to help our students survive (and thrive) this year.

Although we are still awaiting updated advice from the Department of Education and training (DET) about the processes and requirements for the return to on-site learning, we can confirm that ALL of our students will be back on-site in week 2. Rather than stagger our students back in to school on different dates, we believe that it is vital to start the transition back as soon as possible.

Our staff will be spending time on Thursday and Friday (the last week of remote learning) to plan for a successful return to classroom teaching. Assessments conducted in Term 3 in English and Mathematics have helped to identify starting points for each child’s learning and we have identified wellbeing focus areas to support them back in to school.

Utilising this flexible and remote learning time will help us ensure we can welcome back ALL students on Monday 12 October and avoid the need to miss any more valuable face to face teaching time. Learning tasks set for the latter part of next week will mostly be self-directed and support students to prepare for their first week back on-site.

Next week we will send through information that will help you and your child to transition back in to school. This will include start times for each year level (very similar to what was in place during term 2), designated entry and exit points, processes for any temperature checking and highlight any DET and DHHS directives that might impact what we can and cannot do throughout Term 4.

Next week will (hopefully) be the final week of remote and flexible learning and our Administration and Leadership teams will be back on deck to answer any questions you may have.

In the coming days there will be further information that we will send out. We aim to do this in a timely fashion, noting that we are guided by DET/DHHS and their timelines too.

“I’ve always loved the first day of school better than the last day of school. Firsts are best because they are beginnings.”

Kind regards

James Whitla