School News

Dear Families, 

Welcome back to an interrupted Term 3. It was great to see all those smiling faces coming in through the gate on Wedesday morning. Sadly, it may be that we have to adjust to various levels of restrictions and lockdowns into the future. Unlike Sydney, we were able to lock down quickly and not have the Delta strain of this virus spread throughout our community. For this I believe we need to be thankful. It confirms my faith in SA Health and those who are making decisions to keep us safe. I wish to thank our staff for their dedication and hard work during the lockdown. Providing online learning in a primary school and especially for junior primary students is a real challenge. On top of this they took turns to be at school to support those children of essential workers. In a sense this was a double whammy for them but they all managed it well. 

Thank you to our parents, for the part you played in managing the online learning with your children. In these times, while learning remains important, mental health and wellbeing become a high priority for all of us. For this reason teachers endeavoured to touch base with each child each day and hopefully your children appreciated this connection.  

The restrictions upon our school for the next week at least are as follows: 

It will be interesting to see what impact Covid will have on other events this term. Unfortunately we have already had to postpone our P&F Dinner planned for this Saturday. After school sport has already been impacted for the first couple of weeks. Sport carnivals and excursions may also be affected. Other plans that are part of everyday learning may not be affected. An example of this are the various tests that different year levels to. For example the PAT M (maths) and PAT R (reading) tests planned for the next couple of weeks and the ReLAT test planned for week 5. There are also a couple of surveys that the students will complete. One is the regular Classroom Pulse Check In (Wellbeing) survey that we do each term and a new one on the Living Learning Leading Framework that all Catholic Education schools operate under. Parents will also be invited to complete a survey around this framework. In Term 3 each year our Catholic schools celebrate with Catholic Schools Open Week. This is planned for Week 4 but I have no doubt it will be affected by Covid restrictions. Later this term we also have our School Concert and the Catholic Schools Music Festival. We need to be prepared that these events may not happen or they take place with specific restrictions. We will have to wait and see. Hopefully, South Australia will continue to manage Covid responsibly well and everyone will be able to get back to some sense of normality.