Open Day tours

This morning a number of our senior students hosted guided tours of our school for families interested in bringing their child to St Benedict’s next year, particularly for Prep. I cannot stress enough that if you have a child who is a sibling of a current student ready to go to Prep in 2022, you need to provide us with your enrollment application ASAP as the number of siblings we have will dictate how many other places we offer. We have 100 places total for Prep 2022 and I’m already aware of 46 sibling applications. If applications are not in for the first round of offers, we simply may not have room left. I would hate to see siblings left on a waiting list.

Enhancing Catholic School Identity Project

As we have discussed through our newsletters and recently at both the Board and the P&F, as part of the Verification cycle we are in this year for School Renewal, we are asking parents, staff and senior students to complete the ECSIP surveys. It was brought to my attention at our recent P&F meeting that some families feel that because they are not catholic or are not practising catholics, that their feedback would not be relevant. This could not be further from the truth because the survey data needs to be representative of our community which is certainly made up of families from many different faiths as well as those who are not involved with any particular faith practices. As members of a catholic school, you have chosen a catholic schooling experience for your children and this may for many different reasons and therefore your expectations could be very different from each other. I encourage you to please get involved with this survey as all members of our communities voices matter. To ensure the data is valid we need a solid number of families to get involved and we certainly don’t just want to hear from only our catholic families.

Excursions

If you have been keeping up with our school Facebook page, you may have noticed that a number of year levels have already had an excursion this term. Our Year 1’s have been to Billabong Sanctuary, our Year 4/5/6 students have been to the Port and Year 2 will head to St Margaret Creek Farm before the end of this term. Each year level will have two excursions per year. We firmly believe in the value of excursions, getting out into the community and connecting authentically with the learning happening within our school. While excursions require extensive planning, consulting and negotiations as well as a financial investment, we believe that student engagement is significantly enriched by these experiences and therefore the learning is deeper. Please understand that while this approach to learning is not new by any means, it is one that we value highly and therefore to commit to. It is another one of the great things we do consistently at St Benny’s.

Best wishes to our students who are competing in the Inter-school Swimming Carnival on Monday. You always represent our school very proudly and we know you’ll do your best.

Have a fabulous weekend. See you all next week.

Cheers

Penny Collins