Annual Report

I popped up to school a little later than normal for a Saturday morning and it was interesting to see the amount of traffic on Springs Road. There were cars, the obligatory phalanx of cyclists and dog walkers.Very busy for what used to be a quiet country road. It was interesting to see a helicopter up Longs Hill Road crop dusting this morning. I haven't seen crop dusting aircraft up around Glen Park for years.

(Spot the helicopter in the photo below)

I worked on the Annual Report this morning. They've made a few changes which make it easier to complete but no more accurate than in the past. It is difficult in a small school when you don't have access to data because of confidentiality concerns ( even though PDFs of written comments on parent opinion surveys are made available that you could easily identify in a small school) to make much sense out of aspects of the annual report.( It will be worse this year as I have no year 3 or 5 students so I won't have any NAPLAN data for 2014) 

There were a few errors in the financial statement ( They even had DE&T instead of DEECD as our acronym) but I managed get 95% of it completed and it should be ready to distribute to School Council this week.

I also got onto the Premier's Reading Challenge website. I got some of it completed but it froze on me as it used to last year and the year before......( it is time it had an upgrade) 

Below is a photo of the chickens we made on Friday ( I found the template on Pinterest. It originally came from a Bulgarian art website!) 

Some of the kids have been chasing butterflies with nets and imprisoning them in bug catchers over the last few weeks. This morning I found a big praying mantis near the front door. We have had loads of them around the school this year which is great to see.

 Independent Schools at it again

Interesting to read ( Sydney Morning Herald 14/03/14) the Independent Schools Council of Australia (ISCA) doing what they do best- denouncing Gonski reforms. Just to make things more confusing and totally inefficient and unjust, they want to see different funding models for state, catholic and independent schools!

They signed up to Gonski last July and accepted the extra $150 million that came with it but now they are pushing for a system similar to the failed model we had before! 

The ISCA says that Gonski was 'commendable but unachievable'. (Interesting to note the National Catholic Education Commission rejected the ISCAs call to scrap Gonski) This approach would continue to entrench uncertainty and inequity. 

So called elite schools would love a return to the old model which has seen them become a bastion of privilege and exclusion.They apparently want to continue to foster the 'them versus us' approach rather than adopt a model that would see an end to the blame game and provide fair funding to public schools across Australia that are 'carrying the load' of educating over 75% of students and by far the bulk of disabled and disadvantaged students in our schools.