Principal’s Report
Welcome back to school for the final term of 2024!
2025 Enrolments
With planning and preparation well underway for next year, it is vital that we are aware of enrolment changes for next year. If you know that your child/children will not be attending Boronia Heights Primary School in 2025, it would be appreciated if you would inform teachers and the office staff as soon as possible. Your attention to this will assist us greatly with forward planning.
Class Placements for 2025
Over the coming weeks our teaching staff start to meet to place students in classes for 2025. A great deal of consideration and thought goes into this process. Teachers analyse academic data to ensure an even spread of students, discuss social relationships and individual student needs to ensure that we provide the best learning opportunities for all our students.
If you have any information about your child’s academic, behavioural, physical or social factors which you would like us to consider when deciding class placements please put any requests in writing to me by emailing mathew.anderton@education.vic.gov.au. All requests must be received by Friday 1st November.
Please note that it is not appropriate to include requests relating to particular teachers. Your requests will be shared with the teachers to assist them to develop the class lists. If you have particular concerns that you do not wish to be shared with the teachers, please make contact with me.
Thank you in anticipation of working with us and for your understanding as we set our school up for more high-quality teaching and learning next year.
Market Night and Art Show – 25th October
We are looking forward to our Market night and Art Show next Friday. The ‘Hubsters’ have been incredibly busy to make this community night a success. We are looking forward to having our school community, friends and family join in what will be a lovely night. Hopefully the weather is going to be very kind to us too. Hot food will be available for snacks and dinner, with indoor and outdoor stalls ready to sell up big. Please get around to each stall to check out what they have to offer. The Market stalls will be open from 4:00pm and closing at 7:00pm. Come along and enjoy a coffee, a bite to eat and let the kids be involved in activities on the ovals.
This year we are also running our Art Show. Ms Henstock and the kids have been preparing for this all year, so it’s bound to be an impressive show! Please check it out by visiting the Gym and the Art Room on the night.
A massive thank you to the parents that have already put their hands up to support their child’s classroom stall or indeed if they have a stall themselves, however we are still in need of support for classroom stalls, please… please…. please contact your classroom teacher to volunteer, even if it is for 30 minutes.
Looking forward to seeing everyone out and about on Friday enjoying our school grounds and starting your Christmas shopping early.
Colour Run – 30th October
You all should have received information regarding our upcoming Colour Run (also available on Compass NewsFeed). Thank you to those families who have already obtained sponsors. Please remember that you do need to let your classroom teacher know if your child will not be participating. If your child has asthma, please make sure that all medication is at school and up to date. Also, we have been informed that the colour may be difficult to wash from blonde hair. I don’t think I have much to worry about though! We are encouraging children to wear a white t-shirt to show the brilliant colours up. Sunglasses and a wrist band will be supplied.
We will be asking for parent volunteers to help cover our children in colour next week. More information to come.
Cyber Safety advice
There has been a fair amount of discussion in the media over the last few weeks and months about the appropriate use of social media for children. Our Prime Minister said that the government is looking to introduce legislation to parliament by the end of the year to impose a minimum age requirement for the use of digital platforms like Facebook, X, Instagram and Tik Tok.
While we wait to see how this legislation will work once it’s introduced, I thought it would be good to highlight some advice and “food for thought” questions provided by the Office of the eSafety Commissioner about the use of social media and online tools for children.
Currently, almost all social media platforms have a minimum age requirement of 13. The government are looking at increasing this to 16. The reason for this is that these platforms often have content that children are not emotionally ready for if exposed to it. It’s incredibly risky to let a young child loose on these platforms before they are mature enough to manage it. Whilst there are age recommendations in place, children can easily bypass the age verification process and access these platforms. Knowing this, here are some questions worth asking your child to determine if they’re ready for social media:
- Does your child understand the importance of protecting personal information? Emphasise that they should not share information that can identify their name, mobile number, email address, photos, the name of the school, and even sporting clubs they belong to.
- Does your child understand how privacy settings for social media work? You can find advice on privacy settings in The eSafety Guide
- Does your child understand what is safe to share online? Turn off location settings, don’t take photos in school uniform and post it online, don’t share inappropriate pictures, don’t make comments that may be offensive or socially inappropriate.
- Does your child know how to recognise and report cyberbullying and other kinds of abuse? Your child should report this behaviour and block the accounts of people who are doing this.
- Is your child willing to let you establish clear rules and to supervise their activity? Set some boundaries about when and where they can use devices, and when they should be switched off. Having a routine where their device is placed in an area outside of their bedroom overnight is a good suggestion.
At the end of the day, we want our children to responsibly use social media and digital devices. We teach the children how to stay safe online at school, so reinforcing these messages in the home is another protective factor to keep them happy, healthy and resilient.
Kind regards,
Mat Anderton
Principal
