Days of Acknowledgement

National Child Protection Week

This week marks National Child Protection Week, an important time for us all to reflect on the safety and well-being of our children. This annual observance serves as a vital reminder of the collective responsibility we share in safeguarding young people from harm and ensuring they grow up in nurturing environments. At IEPS we recently completed annual training for all staff on the child-safe standards and are proud to be a child-safe school.

Indigenous Literacy Day

Today, we celebrate Indigenous Literacy Day, a special occasion dedicated to honoring the rich cultural heritage and contributions of Indigenous peoples. This day highlights the importance of literacy in preserving Indigenous languages, stories, and traditions. It’s a time to acknowledge the unique knowledge and perspectives that Indigenous cultures bring to our collective understanding and to support efforts aimed at improving literacy outcomes for Indigenous children. Let’s embrace this day by learning more about Indigenous histories and supporting initiatives that empower Indigenous communities through education and storytelling.

2025 Enrolments 

As per the Department's timeline, enrolments have now closed for 2025. If you are wanting to enrol your child for 2025 please contact Carmel Sitilidis our Enrolment Coordinator as a matter of urgency to discuss further.

carmel.sitilidis@education.vic.gov.au

2025 Exits

We ask that you let us know if you are moving or have enrolled in another school in 2025. We require this information as soon as possible to establish grade structures for the start of the new school year. If your child is currently in Foundation-5 and will not be at IEPS in 2025, please notify carmel.sitilidis@education.vic.gov.au in writing as soon as possible.

Parent Teacher Interviews – 12^th September

We invite you to attend our Parent Teacher interviews to discuss your child's progress throughout the school year. These are now live on Compass and require you to book in for an in person or online timeslot.

Staff are available to conduct Parent Teacher interviews on Thursday 12th September between 12:00pm – 7:30pm. The conferences are 15 minutes each and will run from 12-7.30pm. There is a variance to school day on this day and so it is a pupil free day. (For those who require it, OSHClub will be open for the entirety of the day).

Year 3 to 6 parents and students are expected to attend the meetings.  However, student attendance is optional for Prep to Year 2.

You have the option of attending either in person or online. If you select to attend online, once you have chosen a suitable appointment time the classroom teacher will forward you their Webex meeting details. For in person appointments please go to your child's classroom at your confirmed booking time. 

Please Note: Parent Teacher Interviews have already taken place for 2A, 3W & 6S however these students will not be in attendance on this day. As this is a variance to school day, we will not have the usual resources to support student attendance as the teachers, support staff and school nurse will not be in attendance on this day. For those who require it, OSHClub will be open for the entirety of the day.

Extension for 2024 Parent / Caregiver / Guardian Opinion Survey

As you may be aware our school is conducting the annual Parent / Caregiver / Guardian Opinion Survey and is seeking your feedback. The survey, offered by the Department of Education, is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of families’ perceptions of school climate, student behavior, and student engagement.

On Wednesday, August 21^st in the afternoon we re-sent all parents listed as ‘Parent A’ on Compass an invitation with their unique code to complete the survey via email from Carmel Sitilidis. If you have misplaced this, please reach out and we can resend this invitation to you.

Your opinions are important to us and will contribute to celebrating areas of success and identifying areas for improvement and professional development needs in the school, to target school planning and improvement strategies. The department will use the results from the survey for research purposes and to improve outcomes for students.

We currently only have 34% of our community that have responded. As you can see below the %s of representation in some year levels are quite low. I strongly encourage you to complete this survey at your earliest convience, it can be completed on any device and only takes roughly 20 minutes.

Thank you in advance.

Parent Requests for 2024 Classes - (Closes Friday 18^th of October)

As we continue to meet the needs of the students at our school we have already begun the complex task of workforce planning for the 2025 year; considering budgets, teacher requests, staffing changes, and student numbers.

This is the time of the year when we start to explore class structures and carefully consider the best resourcing to meet student needs. As mentioned above, to do this we need to have an accurate understanding of student numbers in each level.

If you know of any families who will be moving into the area and will have children enrolling at Ivanhoe East Primary School for next year, please ask them to make urgent contact with the school. Likewise, please let us know if your family is moving and/or your children will not be returning to IEPS in 2025. 

Throughout October & November, we will be working on our class structures and student combinations for next year. A great deal of thought, planning and time goes into placing students into classes. Every effort is made to place each child in a learning environment that is engaging, caring and productive and each student will be able to nominate up to 5 learning friends for their 2025 class. Also, each student will be guaranteed to receive at least 1 learning friend in their 2025 class.

As you may understand, the allocation of students to new classes is an intricate task and one that requires patience and a great deal of thought. The method used to create classes at IEPS is quite an in-depth analytical process that involves a multitude of variables. These variables include each student’s academics, learning needs, student pairings, behavioural aspects, parent requests, friendship requests and their specific classroom teacher’s observations and judgements. Rest assured even though this is a complex process as mentioned above, each student will have at least one of their requested learning friends in their 2025 class.

Parents may choose to request their child to be with (or not with) another student based on education needs, or if there may have been a past incident or negative history with another student. Parents may request something like having their child separated from a good friend to help them focus or have the opportunity to make new friends. Please note that parent requests must fit the above category and will be taken into consideration, however it is not possible to guarantee that all requests can be met.

Parent input/friendship requests will be open for 6 weeks and will need to be submitted directly to me by 5pm Friday 18th of October (End of Week 2 – Term 4) via email to tom.boyle@education.vic.gov.au. Any request received after this date will unfortunately not be able to be taken into consideration, due to the complexities involved and the strict timeline for class creation.

Please note that while we take any information you provide into consideration, the final decisions regarding your child’s placement rest with the teaching staff and leadership team. Furthermore, once classes are finalised there will be no changes made to those class structures.

School Saving Bonus

Dear parents and carers,

In Term 4, 2024, families with a child enrolled in a government school from Prep to Year 12 in 2025 will receive the one-off $400 School Saving Bonus.

The $400 School Saving Bonus provides families with support for education-related costs, such as school activities and/or school uniforms and textbooks.

The School Saving Bonus is not available for full-fee international students, home schooled students, TAFE students and students attending kindergarten in 2025.   

Actions for parents and carers

Before 18 October 2024, the Department of Education is asking parents and carers to:

• Complete enrolment: If your child, or children are changing government school for Term 1 2025, or starting Prep or Year 7 in 2025. For more information, read about Enrolling in School. 
• Check your contact information: Ensure your email address and phone number is up to date with us. You can check this information by contacting us directly.

We need to ensure your contact information is up to date as the Department of Education will email you twice:

• in October, to verify your email address
• in November, with your $400 School Saving Bonus and access to an online system.

Please check your junk mail regularly to make sure you do not miss an important email.

To learn more about the School Saving Bonus, download the School Saving Bonus Information sheet for government school parents and carers or visit vic.gov.au/school-saving-bonus.

Network Principal Conference

The month of August has delivered two principal conferences, one being the State Principal Association conference and last week was the Banyule Network Conference, where I am a member of the executive team that supports all of the schools across the Banyule/Nillumbik network. The conference last week was exceptional and we heard from the Regional Director and Deputy Secretary of Education along with Dr Ryan Dunn who works with executive members across the system. Throughout these sessions we were able to confirm that direction that IEPS is on is directly aligned with the Department of Education and the current initiatives that they are asking schools to implement.

Trends Across All Presenters:

• Importance of Explicit and Responsive Teaching: All emphasise structured, evidence-based teaching methods that adapt to student needs. This is present in IEPS’s current instructional models and we are continuing to work with external stakeholders around evidence-based research of responsive teaching.
• Continuous Improvement and Adaptation: Emphasised across presenters, focusing on maintaining effective practices while adapting as needed. At IEPS we are on a continuous improvement journey and even though our recent School Review was extremely successful we are continuing to adapt our structures and approaches based on the needs of our growing community.
• Collaborative and Collective Learning: Both leadership and teaching strategies highlight the importance of collective efforts and shared responsibility. At IEPS our Teacher Collaboration was scored at 90% which is 31% above our similar schools and has increased 37% over the course of the last 2 years. Collective Efficacy was scored at 96% which is 13% above our similar schools and has increased 12% over the course of the last 2 years. Our current approaches and structures promote collective efforts and shared responsibility.
• Avoiding Premature Solutions: There's a strong trend towards thoroughly understanding problems before jumping to solutions, avoiding "solutionitis." We use the Framework for Improvement Student Outcomes Improvement Cycle for all of our decision making. We use this framework to implement strategies and actions to improve every student’s learning and wellbeing. The cycle embodies the leading research and global best-practice research on school improvement and teacher professional learning.
• Integration and Alignment: All presenters stress the integration of teaching strategies and alignment with broader frameworks of VTLM 2.0 for cohesive educational practices. At IEPS we are currently unpacking the VTLM 2.0 to support our current instructional models and our overall teaching and learning approach. Our current approaches will only be amended slightly as our results are currently showing that on average 92% of our students are achieving expected level and showing expected growth in all key learning areas.

R U Okay Day at IEPS

District Athletics Update - (See below in 'School News & Events' section for full details)

Reminders

Father's Day Drinks - Fri 6 September - 6-8pm (See below in 'School News & Events' section for full details)

Footy day - 20th September (last day of term 3)

Kelly Sports @ IEPS

Kelly Sports is partnering with Ivanhoe East Primary School and is offering a new multi-sport program from Week 7-10 of this term. 

This will be a Prep to Grade 4 offered program running on Tuesday afternoons from 3.40pm - 4.40pm. Kelly Sports will be using this initiative to see what interest there is at the school before introducing a further 3 programs in Term 4, featuring the possibility of 2x lunchtime activities and adding another afternoon session, as well as keeping their multi sports program.

Benefits for families and the school 

• 40% New Balance voucher for all families that register
• Sibling and Multi program discounts  

More information to come later in Term 3. In the meantime, if the above is of interest to you and your child, we ask that you sign up at your earliest convenience with the first session starting Tuesday week.

Exploring Emotions Through Art: A Rainbow of Feelings

During Art lessons, students from all year levels have delved into the fascinating world of emotions through visual art. Our primary goal has been to deepen our understanding of emotions. By creating art that embodies a ‘Rainbow of Feelings’, we aim to cultivate empathy, encourage self-expression and foster stronger connections within our school community.

During the Rainbow of Feelings unit, Year 3 to 6 students explored various pairs of emotions, using them as inspiration for their artistic creations. This has allowed them to authentically express themselves through different art mediums of their choice. Similarly, Prep to Year 2 students focused on facial expressions, body posture, colour, line and texture to create artworks that capture a range of feelings.

We are excited to showcase the series of upcoming art displays throughout the main school building this term. These exhibitions will showcase the diverse spectrum of emotions explored by our students, reflecting self-discovery and creativity.

We welcome our community to celebrate this demonstration of artistic expression and emotional exploration by viewing some of our Rainbow of Feelings displays in our main building breezeway from Week 5 (12th August).

• Week 5 – 7 (12th to 30th August)             Love/Pride & Scared/Worried
• Week 8 - 10 (2nd to 20th September)   Excited/Happy & Angry/Frustrated

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