Principal's Log

Many of you may have heard or read commentary in the media earlier this week about the latest announcement from the Australian Government. Essentially the Federal Government has offered to bring forward the payment of the usual Independent Schools 2020 funding where schools agree by this Friday “to have a plan to fully re-open classrooms by 1st June” and to have “a target of having at least 50% of students attending classroom-based learning by 1st June”.

As a school we continue to focus our decisions on:

• The health and wellbeing of all members of our College community, including students, staff and families.
• The requirements, advice and guidelines of relevant authorities, including the state government.
• The support of high-quality learning for our students and their pastoral care.
• Supporting families.

We advise that Lutheran Education Queensland schools have decided not to seek the earlier payment for these same reasons and so there is no change to our expected operations at this time.

Parents will have received an email from me earlier this week to advise that the parent portal in Nav is now open. From the parent portal, you will have access to a range of resources, including learning and wellbeing information, policies and procedures, notices, a personalised College calendar and links to other key platforms and community networks. You will also have greater transparency of your child’s learning journey, with access to their timetable and due work. Parents who have not yet accessed Nav are asked to access the email from the College and “have a play over the weekend”. Gradually we will shift the notification-based content contained in this form of newsletter into Nav. A special thank you to our Community Liaison and Communications Officer Ms Steph Scarlett and ICT and Communications Assistant Mr Tim Ambrose for their professional and creative leadership of the establishment of this portal.

Middle and Senior College parents will have also received an email inviting them to book parent, student and teacher conferences next week. Teachers of Prep – Year 5 students have arranged phone conferences. Across Years 6-12 we will be trying a new web based system for these connections. The main purpose of the Middle and Senior conversations is to review the learning of Term 1 and to set goals with the student. As such, the involvement of students in the conferences is preferred where possible. We understand that this may be more challenging in this current context.

Thank you to our parents, staff and students who have provided feedback about their experiences with online learning through the survey last week. The feedback was very positive with a lot of appreciation expressed. As in our normal learning spaces, we see children engaging differently with materials at home. We will review the feedback and continue to refine student, staff and family experiences taking this into account.

There have been many highlights this week including great independent learning from our students right across Prep – Year 12, dance and drama pieces coming together, hospitality students creating their own YouTube clips and both students and staff having fun engaging in Mr Darren Hooper’s Beat the Teacher and sport challenges.

Thank you again to staff, students and parents for the great way you are all working together to provide the best possible learning experiences for our young people in this environment.

May God open our eyes to the opportunity for fun and humour in our days.

Dr Bronwyn Dolling, Principal