Dear parents,

As we come to the end of a difficult term for all members of the school and wider community, we look forward to two weeks without a focus on screens. The COVID pandemic has deprived our students and staff of the opportunity to engage in face-to-face learning in the school setting which is beneficial for both their educational and emotional well-being.

We return to school and remote learning on Tuesday 5^th October and hopefully, it is day one of nineteen school days before we can return to school.

The prolonged period of remote learning has made school staff and Catholic Education examine how teachers gather assessment data that will inform term four reports.  Gathering data during lock down presents a number of issues around equity and validity.  We have students who for a number of reasons are not fully engaged in remote learning and struggle to submit work set by staff members. Some of the reasons include access to technology, language barriers and parents not having the skills to assist.  We are also unable to judge whether the work submitted is solely the work of the student.

If we head back into class at the start of week five we will only have six weeks to gather data before reports need to be finalised to go home.  This seems like an ample amount of time however if I was to asses a student’s maths ability by conducing what is known as a SENA test and also a reading test it would take approximately 50 minutes per child as each test is a one on one assessment with the teacher.  Most of our classes have at least 26 students so time is an issue. Conducting these assessments would need to be done while the teacher is teaching and carrying out other duties associated with the daily running of the school.

We will keep parents informed of any decisions about assessment and student reports.

NAPLAN

This week the results for the NAPLAN tests undertaken by student in years three and five during term two arrived. Parents are able to collect their child’s report from the front office if you wish to do so while we are in lockdown.  Once children return to school, we will send home via the students any uncollected NAPLAN results.

Maths Problem

Congratulations to Willem van Galen who was this week’s winner.  Thank you to all who have participated over the last few weeks and I will have new problems for you in week one of term four.

God Bless

Peter Hughes