Dear Parents and Guardians,

We have had a very exciting and busy start to the term with lots of great things happening in our school community. 

We hosted an incursion which was run by engineering students from University of Melbourne where students learnt all about clean water and filtration and experimented with different materials to create their own water filtration system. All students were engaged throughout this exciting learning experience. 

For the last two weeks we had AFL Victoria running football clinics for our students. The coaches from AFL Victoria did a fantastic job teaching new skills through fun and interesting lessons and activities. Each time I observed the lessons, all I saw were smiles on students' faces and everyone joining in.

We have been very lucky to have Denis Huffer assisting Bec Stobie during PE lessons for the last three weeks. Denis is an expert in teaching athletics and brings many years experience of high quality athletics training to our school. Denis has been helping Bec teach a range of athletics sports and skills.

As you are hopefully aware that St Mary’s is a Child Safe School, meaning that our whole community works together to prioritise the safety of our children. There has recently been a change to the Child Safe Standards that help us to keep children safe in our school. We are in the process of updating our school procedures and policies to match these new standards and these will be reflected on our school website and throughout our school. If you have any questions about these new standards or anything to do with child safety please don’t hesitate to contact me.

We keep all those families and staff that are affected by illness at the moment in our prayers. It has been a very difficult time for a lot of families and staff and we hope that with a little more sunshine and warmth comes a break from these continued illnesses.

Kind regards,

Julian Blackford