2024 Prep Enrolments (CLOSED)

If you have missed the cut off and are still wanting to enrol, please contact Carmel Sitilidis (Enrolment officer) immediatley via the front office or by phone 9499 2171 and/or email carmel.sitilidis@education.vic.gov.au.
We have currently implemented a waitlist as we have reached our capacity for 2024. Any future enquiries will be placed onto this waitlist in priority of receiving them.

Days of Acknowledgement

August 18th – National Day Against Bullying
The NDA theme for 2023 is 'growing connections'. This theme supports research findings that strong school community connections and social skills are protective factors in the prevention of bullying and help enable positive, help-seeking behaviours in students.

What is Bullying?
• It is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm. It can involve an individual or a group misusing their power, or perceived power, over one or more persons who feel unable to stop it from happening.

What is not bullying?
There are also some behaviours, which, although they might be unpleasant or distressing, are not bullying:
• mutual conflict that involves a disagreement, but not an imbalance of power. Unresolved mutual conflict can develop into bullying if one of the parties targets the other repeatedly in retaliation. A single-episode act of nastiness or physical aggression, or aggression directed towards many different people, is not bullying. Social rejection or dislike is not bullying unless it involves deliberate and repeated attempts to cause distress, exclude or create dislike by others.

On this day staff will be working on curriculum aligned lessons with students and we have taken this opportunity to outline our Well-being Framework that encompasses proactive bullying prevention and emphasises a positive environment where all students can thrive and flourish in their academic, social and emotional learning. (Please see below for a detailed outline of our Wellbeing Framework).

August 19th – 25th – Book Week!

Book Week is a celebration of reading, imagination, wonder and curiosity. Created by the Children’s Book Council of Australia, this week allows us to explore what we love about books and the places they take us. This year the theme is ‘Read, Grow, inspire’ and the awards are announced on the 18th of August. Ivanhoe East Primary looks forward to this celebration every year and we are very fortunate to have our wonderful librarian Pam, and a great library stocked with stories that allow us to grow our skills, interests and wonder.

Our book week parade is on the 23rd of August and we can’t wait to see everyone dressed as their favourite characters and stories. Its going to be a fun week!
If you wanted to learn more about the shortlisted Australian books, you can find them on this website:
https://cbca.org.au/shortlist-2023

Banyule Council Walk/Scoot/Ride Campaign

We are excited to announce that IEPS will be participating in the walk, ride and scoot to school program. Throughout this program we strive to achieve students becoming more active in the way they arrive at school. This program begins next week on August the 21^st. Like last year we are tracking the amount that each student is riding/walking/scooting to school and promoting some healthy competition between classes.

Let’s hope we have some nice sunny mornings and we see even more families walking/riding/scooting to school.

Whole School approach to Wellbeing (School Wide Positive Behaviour Framework)

At IEPS we bring together resources that are available across the government to help schools address bullying in all its forms, from physical threats to cyberbullying to verbal intimidation. This approach gives our school the tools and resources to build a culture of respect and understanding and empower students to stand up and speak out when they see bullying.

Health & Wellbeing Initiatives

⁃ Positive and nurturing environment focusing on developing students’ confidence, social skills and healthy life habits.

⁃ Supporting our community with allied health connections.

⁃ Through the school’s mental health fund we have employed a registered school psychologist to support staff, groups of students and at times individual students/parents.

Cyber Safety

⁃ As an e-smart school we recognise the importance in preparing students to confidently navigate a digital world and we have evidence-based policies and practices to promote cyber safety and assist in the prevention of cyberbullying. Furthermore we are partnered with the cyber safety project  (https://cybersafetyproject.com.au) as well as having a Digital Technologies coordinator as a member of staff and an IT technician onsite.

School wide positive behaviour support

At IEPS we have embedded a school wide positive behaviour framework. This framework features the following:

⁃ A common philosophy and purpose: Staff and students use a common language to discuss behaviour. This emphasises appropriate behaviour much like academic learning.

⁃ Expected behaviours: The school identifies 3 to 5 behavioural expectations (school values) that apply at all times. Clear, positively stated examples of these are identified and displayed across a range of school settings.

⁃ Establish procedures for teaching and practising expected behaviours which involves a well-being lesson every Monday working through a range of curriculum resources and point of need strategies for students. This lesson sets up the week with a tailored approach to well-being that is differentiated for each grade and specific for individual students as required.

⁃ A developed continuum of procedures to discourage inappropriate behaviour: Our behaviour management flowchart clearly defines specific strategies and responses to address undesired behaviours with a restorative approach of reflecting and repairing should students not be able to redirect themselves.

⁃ Use procedures for record-keeping, decision making and ongoing monitoring. This is done through our chronicle platform which is part of our LMS compass. We regularly review data on behaviour issues, the settings in which they occur, and the consequences most likely to be applied for inappropriate behaviours to identify root causes of behaviours and provide necessary proactive measures of intervention to support our students. We correlate chronicle with other sources of data such as academic progress, and well-being data and analyse these data sets to make necessary adjustments to school operations in an effort to reduce inappropriate behaviour.

⁃ Support staff to use effective classroom practices. We have established systems to support staff to adopt evidence-based instructional practices associated with reductions in inappropriate behaviour.

⁃ We use a multi tiered system of support which is a tiered intervention framework which invests in primary prevention (tier 1): supports for all students, staff and settings. Secondary prevention (tier 2): additional specialised group systems for students with at-risk behaviour. Tertiary prevention (tier 3): specialised, individualised systems for students with high-risk behaviour, provided in addition to primary and secondary prevention.

Safe Schools

⁃ This is a division of the department that supports inclusivity and diversity of all students in creating a safe and inclusive environment to tackle any bullying, harassment and/or discrimination.

⁃ Safe Schools is not a subject taught in the classroom and it is not a part of the curriculum. It is a program for principals, teachers and school communities and schools have the discretion to use as many or as few of the resources, training materials, and other support that the program offers to help them deliver their commitment.

⁃ We have engaged with Safe Schools to support us on our journey of inclusivity and diversity. We are committed to provide an environment that is free from discrimination where irrespective of race, culture or gender everyone is accepted and provided with a safe learning environment where they can thrive and flourish.

Respectful Relationships

⁃ The Respectful Relationships program supports schools and early childhood settings to promote and model respect, positive attitudes and behaviours. It teaches our children how to build healthy relationships, resilience and confidence.

⁃ These age appropriate resources support curriculum delivery and include lesson plans and activities that help students learn and practice social skills and apply them in a positive way to learning, life and relationships.

⁃ The materials cover eight social and emotional learning topics to support the delivery of respectful relationships content through the Victorian curriculum. 

⁃ The resources support a whole school approach to creating equal and respectful attitudes, behaviours, structures and practices across the school culture and ethos.

Bully Stoppers & I have your back

The Bully Stoppers online toolkit supports teachers, students as well as, parents and carers to work together to help prevent and respond to bullying. Staff at IEPS have access and utilise these resources as part of our School Wide Positive Behaviour Framework. We encourage our wider community to engage with these resources at home. https://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/programs/bullystoppers/Pages/parentmodules.aspx

We also encourage parents engage with support organisations and resources should they need. https://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/programs/bullystoppers/Pages/parentres.aspx

⁃ While it can be hard to see someone being bullied in person or online, it’s even harder to be the person being bullied. We can all do something to help. We can all be upstanders. An upstander is a person who speaks or acts in support of an individual or cause, particularly someone who intervenes on behalf of a person being bullied. The Department has come together with Melbourne Football Club, and students from Victorian government schools to send an important message about bullying. The message is: ‘I have your back’. While it can seem daunting, there are safe ways to be an upstander, online and face-to-face.

Inclusion & Diversity

The Department and all Victorian government schools are committed to creating safe, respectful and inclusive places of work and learning.

Child Safe Standards - we keep children, young people and students safe, by involving our community and students in child safety; management of child abuse risks in online environments; Governance, systems and processes for keeping students safe.

Equal opportunity and human rights – We are committed to creating a school community and learning environment where all students are welcomed, accepted, and treated equitably and with respect regardless of their backgrounds or attributes such as race, religious belief or activity, gender, disability so that they can participate, achieve and thrive at school.

Respectful Behaviours within the School Community policy - The Respectful Behaviours in the School Community Policy defines standards of behaviour for all adult members of the school community. It also defines unacceptable behaviours and consequences for such behaviours. This helps to ensure schools are safe, supportive and respectful places for work and learning for all students, staff and other adults.

At IEPS we are committed to support our community through each of key stakeholders being students, parents, and carers to provide a learning environment where all members can thrive and flourish. This commitment is a collaborative effort between all three stakeholders. We appreciate the collaboration between these stakeholders, especially the relationship between parents and teachers to provide continual support for your child/our students. If you would like to discuss the supports in place  for your child, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s classroom teacher and/or myself. Furthermore if you would like anymore information on our School Wide Positive Behaviour Framework, please head to our website alternatively you are welcome to contact me directly.

Parent Teacher Conferences (Tomorrow 17^th August)

Tomorrow Thursday 17^th August we will be conducting our Parent Teacher Conferences through a variance to school day (Pupil Free Day.) Please note OSHClub will be open for the entirety of the day should you require these services. These conferences will run from 12.00 pm – 7.00 pm as a hybrid approach meaning parents can either elect to have their meeting online or face to face. Each meeting will be for 15 minutes.

Please note the expectation is that our Year 3-6 students attend these conferences, F-2 it is optional for the student to attend.

The Parent / Caregiver / Guardian Opinion Survey

We have had 12% of our community respond to The Parent / Caregiver / Guardian Opinion Survey. As this is the annual Department survey that assists us in gaining an understanding of families’ perceptions of school climate, student behavior, and student engagement, we encourage all families to participate. Our school will use the survey results to help inform and direct future school planning and improvement strategies, therefore the more responses, the more that can be celebrated and consequent effective forward planning can occur.

All families would have received an email from carmel.sitilidis@education.vic.gov.au on Monday 7^th of August with their Individual Parent Log In details and information on how to complete the survey. The survey only takes 15-20 minutes to complete. If you did not receive the email with your log in, please contact Carmel directly.  

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you would like more information.

Canteen

At IEPS we are very fortunate to have a canteen onsite. For our canteen to remain open we depend heavily on parents for support.

As our way of saying thank you we are offering a FREE LUNCH (for your child) to any parent that volunteers their time to help keep the canteen running.
Volunteers: email your child’s order before 8.45 am on the day you are volunteering, and Kim will add it to the list and your child will receive a free lunch item. Her email address is Kim.Hall@education.vic.gov.au

Attached is the Canteen Roster
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IsdRGt5rmeRorq0G-Rh3KbnO7L_DAXXQKDF7DRbJAQc/edit

Assembly Update

As mentioned earlier in the term we have moved to fortnighly onsite assemblies this term.

This week there will be an onsite assembly at 9.00 am in our Gymnasium.

Ben Phillips

Acting Assistant Principal

Ivanhoe East Primary School

My School Connect

(Please refer to 'Canteen' listed under the 'Our School' heading on the IEPS website to find the 'My School Connect' link)

The cut off time for ordering online has changed to 9:00am. 

To prevent disappointment at lunchtime please keep checking:
• that you have the correct date for the lunch order
• that you check out and pay or your order will not be received by the canteen.

Look out for the Green Thumbs up and a confirmation e-mail

Thank you

Kim- Canteen Manager

Tickets are now available. Get in early so you don’t miss out on the social event of the year!

https://www.trybooking.com/CKJMX