Welcome to Term 2. I hope you had a wonderful holiday and took the opportunity to unwind and prepare for the new school term.
We have a lot happening this term, with our main focus on starting the process for enrolments.
Enrolments
We currently have an enrolment of 315 students and we will continue to grow over the next 2 to 3 years with an expected enrolment of over 1100 by 2026. I have been very impressed with how well our students have adapted to their new surroundings and have no doubt that this will enable us to continue to build a strong culture as we move into the future. Having 5 childcare centres and kindergartens within walking distance will undoubtedly ensure that we are pretty busy for a while yet.
We ask for your help to advertise our great school within the Thornhill Park community and to ensure we are able to enrol all of our new students for 2024 before the end of term 3 to ensure we will have enough teachers to teach our student cohort. We are in the midst of a teaching shortage at the moment and it can be very difficult to acquire new staff, which is why we need to be organised and ensure that people are enrolling as soon as possible.
Prep Information and School Tours
I will be running 3 Prep information sessions and School Tours for prospective Prep parents on Monday 8th May at 9am, Tuesday 16th May at 2pm and Wednesday 24th May at 5pm. Each session will be identical, so parents only need to attend one of these. So far we have about 25 people coming to these events. We want to get that number up to about 50 to ensure we are getting our message out to the community in a consistent way. During these sessions we will discuss what it means to get your child ready for Prep, how you go about the process and take parents on a tour of the school. We look forward to seeing parents on these days and helping to guide you through the process.
Parent Forum
Next Friday 12th May, I will be running a Parent Forum at our school at 9am. This is an optional event and provides parents an opportunity to find out about how our school is going and to provide feedback for future improvements. We would love to have as many parents as are able to participate in this session. More forums will be organised in future terms to ensure we are listening to the community and everyone is feeling informed about the progress of our school.
Uniform
Being a member of the Thornhill Park Primary School Community you are making a commitment to wear our colours with pride. It is therefore important to ensure that students are always wearing their uniforms in a way that shows they are proud of their school. If we notice that this is not the case, teachers will ask students to correct this immediately or they may send a message to parents on Class Dojo to align with our uniform policy.
I have noticed that several students have been wearing their uniform incorrectly at school. Can I please remind you that we require students to be in polo shirts, windcheaters, hoodies, bomber jackets or vests that have the school logo on them. Students may wear a coat or jacket over their uniform on cold days, but must only wear these outside. School beanies are available from the office for $15 and are the preferred items to keep children warm in winter. It is essential that student names are on all items of clothing.
Please be aware that jeans, tracksuit pants with sporting logos, shorts of a different colour and sports branded tracksuit tops are not uniform items and student will be asked to remove these if possible during a school day. Hijabs and turbans, also need to be either light blue, navy blue or grey. Black is not one of our school colours and should not be worn.
Assembly
We love seeing lots of parents at our assembly every Friday afternoon. I would ask that to avoid the chaos that can happen at the end of the assembly that parents move into the gym as far as possible and sit on the bench at the rear of the gym. You are also welcome to walk along the back of the students and stand on the side. Can I please remind everyone to be careful when collecting students as this will become more difficult to manage as we get larger and we need to ensure student safety at all times.
Canteen
We are currently on the lookout for a canteen provider to enable our students to access food for recess and lunch time each day. If this is something that you are interested and have experience in, I would ask that you fill out the Expression of Interest attached to our Social Media, Class Dojo and Compass posts. The successful applicant would need to provide a full and comprehensive plan about what they will provide including a menu, staffing and pricing. Food needs to be aligned with the DET Healthy Eating Policy. We hope to have this up and running within the next couple of months.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Darryl Spiteri
Principal