Winter is here!!! The bitterly cold weather has closed out the week and the long weekend promises to be cold and (hopefully) wet. This has also been the week where we have had to endure power outages and our staff and students have coped remarkably well. We were very fortunate that we were in our newly refurbished primary classrooms because they are filled with light and hold the heat very well. Our students are generally appropriately decked out in the winter uniform and many are now sporting the newly instituted school beanie. We encourage all our students to wear the full uniform with pride and not add additional items to what they wear. This includes hoodies, non-uniform jackets and different jumpers. We are happy if students layer extra warmth underneath their uniform so that they don’t feel the biting cold when out on the playground. Please consult the uniform policy if in doubt of what is permitted to wear to school.

This week our Year 2 and Year 4 students had their annual spiritual retreats. Mrs Maxwell reported that the students were engaged and interested in what was presented and appeared to take a lot away from the day’s activities. Thank you to Mrs Maxwell for all her organisation and to Miss Baron, Ms Van Kerk Oerle and Miss Sutherland for their leadership and support.

Our teachers are very busy at the moment marking student assessments and preparing semester reports for all students. This is a very busy but important time in the school calendar as secondary students have just finished exam week and are finalising assessments for the first two terms of 2025. Reports will be available on the COMPASS portal at the end of the term and will capture the growth, achievements and efforts of the students over the past 18 weeks. Whilst the grade is an important part of any report the engagement with learning, effort and attitude are equally as important in reporting to parents. Following the release of the reports will be the opportunity to meet with teachers at the Parent/Teacher/Student interviews in Term 3. This is an opportunity to get some clarity around the report and also to feed forward for future growth and development. Keep an eye out for these bookings at the end of the term.

Our Year 10 students are busy compiling their Work Experience letters and should have made contact with any prospective employers or businesses where they would like to sample the work life. Our Year 9 students are also busy fundraising for their annual city excursion in Term 4 and the lamington orders have been collated and ingredients bought for the lamington making afternoon next Friday. Many hands make light work and it is generally a fun yet messy afternoon. Our Year 8 students have also planned fundraising by conducting a wood raffle. Please keep an eye out to purchase tickets and support our students.

Today our fabulous canteen achieved a personal best. Today they filled 173 online orders and another lot of written bags plus a heap of counter orders. Amanda and her dedicated workers do an amazing job and provide a very valuable service to our community. We could definitely use more hands in the canteen especially on a Friday when over half the school avail themselves of the delicious goodies provided on our canteen menu. Please give some thought to helping on a Friday or Thursday morning from 9 until 11.20 to help with the huge number of orders that all have to be individually wrapped and prepared fresh. We are blessed to have such a wonderful canteen manager and  I have no doubt she is the most popular staff member that we have at Sacred Heart.

Our confirmation classes are in full swing and last week our candidates were presented to the parish community. Our candidates will be confirmed on 21 June at 5pm at the Parish Vigil Mass. This is a very important time in the faith journey of our young people. Please keep them in your prayers.

We are nearly half way through the year and already the students who have achieved Bronze awards for their efforts, manners, achievements and attitude has exceeded past year’s numbers. There are also a few who have managed to earn the Silver award and these will be presented at the Feast Day Mass on 27 June.  Many of our students are aspiring to receive a Gold award and they are motivated to be the very best version of themselves and also to be invited to the Principal’s Gold Award lunch at the end of the year. Whilst we acknowledge these behaviours and attitudes with house points through our award system we are also striving to build in our students positive habits that foster strong productive relationships and the skills to be a valuable member of any community.

Last week’s Athletics Carnival was held on the most glorious of days. The weather was kind to us and the students and staff enjoyed a fun day at Albert Park. There were many and varied demonstrations of athletic prowess and a few records were broken. It is quite amazing to recognise that some records have stood for over 30 years and don’t appear to be under threat of being broken. Please read the sports reports for all the specific details of the athletic champions and record breakers. It was a fabulous day and Mercy House won the trophy for best house. Hopefully the glory days of O’Shaughnessy are not far away! Thank you to Ms Withers and Ms Van Kerk Oerle for their excellent organisation and their wonderful assistant Mrs Simmons for all their hard work.

We are now deep into the latter half of the term and there are only 4 weeks of school remaining until the winter break. There are lots of activities and learning opportunities still to come and it is vitally important that students are at school all the time. In analysing our attendance data it is disappointing to note that the bulk of our absences fall on a Friday and the best attended day is Wednesday. This essentially means that too many of our students are repeatedly missing the lessons provided on a Friday and they are missing important content. We do not encourage the students to have long weekends and miss valuable school days. It makes it very hard for students to catch up on explicit instruction when the class moves on to the new content in their absence. Please contact the school if you are struggling getting your child/ren to school as we are invested in making sure that our students are happy to attend and happy to learn on every possible school day.

God Bless

Ms Nicky Trinder

Principal