Newlands Primary School
Newlands Primary School is situated in West Preston opposite the new Coburg Hill development. Our school is proud of the role we play in our community and we take pride in our welcoming atmosphere. At Newlands, students, teachers and parents all actively participate in the learning partnership.
We provide effective learning experiences within a stimulating and challenging environment. Our rich and extensive curriculum gives priority to the mastering of literacy and numeracy and places an emphasis on the global classroom. The life of our students is enriched through an exciting range of creative programs that include: Spanish, Visual and Performing Arts, Art Shows and the School Concert. Student learning is significantly enhanced by substantial access to Information and Communication Technologies with iPads fully integrated into learning areas at all levels.
A healthy lifestyle is encouraged through Physical Education lessons and an active sports program. We have extensive school gardens which include indigenous plantings at the front of the school and a school vegetable garden. Leadership and social skills are developed through the student leadership program, a Buddy Program, Public Speaking and Community Performances.
Newlands Primary School strives to provide all students with a happy and active start to their school years in a secure atmosphere of warmth and creativity. We endeavour to provide a progressive curriculum with traditional values and promote an atmosphere where effort is valued and achievement is recognised.
Meet the Principal
Welcome to the Newlands Primary School’s website. I would hope that visitors and members of our school community find the website useful and informative.
Newlands Primary School has a dedicated staff, supportive parents and community and great students that enjoy all the benefits of a dynamic and high performing school.
Mr Ross Dudgeon
Principal
We have a wonderful team at Newlands who are all committed to creating a supportive and caring community.
Our classroom teachers are the first reference point for families to communicate with the school in regards to their child’s learning and wellbeing. Classroom teachers are encouraged to engage in informal/quick check-ins and conversations during soft starts and at pick-up. Families are also welcome to message their child’s teacher and are able to organise meetings for lengthier conversations through Sentral.
The leadership, administration and wellbeing and learning support team members are also available to further support and engage with our school community.
To contact the leadership, administration or wellbeing and learning support team members, email newlands.ps@education.vic.gov.au and attention the email to the relevant person.
Ross
Principal
Luke
Assistant
Principal
Jess
Leading Teacher
Literacy
Graeme
Leading Teacher
Numeracy
Luisa
Leading Teacher
Spanish
Sonya
Wellbeing Leader
Melissa
Tutor Learning
Raema
Team Leader
STEAM Teacher
Raul
P.E Teacher
Margaret
Visual Arts Teacher
Felipe
Music Teacher
Nerida
Inquiry Teacher
Kehani
Library Teacher
Katherine
Team Leader
English Classroom Teacher
Paula
Spanish Classroom Teacher
Kate
English Classroom Teacher
Juan
Spanish Classroom Teacher
Sophia
Team Leader
English Classroom Teacher
Christine
Spanish Classroom Teacher
Kylee
English Classroom Teacher
Rob
Spanish Classroom Teacher
Moira
English Classroom Teacher
Sergio
Spanish Classroom Teacher
Clara
Team Leader
Spanish Classroom Teacher
Simon
English Classroom Teacher
Jose
Spanish Classroom Teacher
Mel
English Classroom Teacher
Angelica
Spanish Classroom Teacher
Courtney
English Classroom Teacher
Karren
Team Leader
Spanish Classroom Teacher
Steph
Spanish Language Assistant
Lisa
English Classroom Teacher
Lizzie
English Language Assistant
Our School Values
Care
We care about improving all aspects of our learning. Our school is a safe and secure learning environment, which celebrates diversity. We care about our world by understanding and taking action.
Creativity
We embrace creativity as a cornerstone of our learning journey, continuously seeking to comprehend and actively participate in the world that surrounds us. We endeavor to make meaningful contributions that uplift both ourselves and our global community.
Curiosity
We develop our strengths and identify opportunities to acquire new knowledge and skills. Our school learns through wondering, questioning, thinking, and inquiring. We are curious about the world we live in.
Responsibility
We ensure we are organised, and are and ready for learning. Our learning community is responsible for everyone’s learning success. We are responsible for our environment, locally and globally.
School Keystones
The Learner
We never stop learning. We need to plan our actions. Through persistence, we strive to understand. Through reflection, we refine our thinking.
The Inquirer
We develop our strengths and identify opportunities to acquire new knowledge and skills. Our school learns through wondering, questioning, thinking, and inquiring. We are curious about the world we live in.
The Communicator
To be an effective communicator we listen to others and prompt for more information, we can succinctly explain and present our thinking and learning.
The Collaborator
To be effective collaborators, we need to concentrate attentively, support each other, contribute to others’ thinking and unite to move forward.
Strategic Plan
The strategic plan is the School’s statement to its community about what it stands for and what it intends to do over the next four years to improve student outcomes. It sets out the school’s direction, its goals, targets and key strategies for improvement. The strategic plan is available to the School Community to reflect on the outcomes, celebrate achievements, and identify effective strategies as well as areas for improvement for the next strategic planning period.
Annual Implementation Plan
The annual implementation plan describes how the key improvement strategies in the school’s strategic plan and other significant projects will be put into operation during the year and how they will be monitored. This document is used to plan and communicate the work for the coming year and how this will lead to achieving the identified goals and targets with the school community.
Goal: To develop students who are literate and numerate.
Targets:
- In NAPLAN, reduce the percentage of Year 3 students in developing for Writing from 18% in 2023 to 10%.
- In NAPLAN, increase the percentage of Year 3 students in Exceeding for Numeracy from 23% in 2023 to 30%.
- In NAPLAN, increase the percentage of Year 5 students in Exceeding for Writing from 10% in 2023 to 15%.
- In NAPLAN, increase the percentage of Year 5 students working in Exceeding from 3% to 23% in Mathematics.
- In our Staff Opinion Survey, ‘Staff seek feedback’ to improve practice will increase to 80% in 2024.
- In our Staff Opinion Survey, having time to share pedagogical content knowledge’ will increase to 70% percent.
Key Improvement Strategy: Embed systematic assessment practices to direct and improve student learning.
Outcomes:
- Use of Rubrics
We aim to continue to develop our use of rubrics to inform whole class teaching and identify individual student needs. We also aim to strengthen students’ use of the rubrics for self-assessment and goal setting. - Consistent Data Collection:
We use a central point where all student data is collected and stored. We will continue to use this platform by ensuring student data is uploaded regularly to support robust conversations about student learning and teaching practice. Additionally, we aim to use this data to support our ability to measure the growth of our students in Spanish and the success of our Spanish Bilingual program from a whole-school perspective. - Initiate Spanish Language Assessments (Cervantes) with selected students.
This year, we aim to have selected students undertake a formal Spanish language assessment, which allows us to compare the results to Newlands PS school assessments and expectations.
Key Improvement Strategy: Strengthen teacher capacity to develop and implement high-quality programs of learning.
- Strengthen Literacy and Numeracy Instructional Practices
This year we aim to develop our implementation of the four proficiencies in Mathematics – understanding, fluency, problem-solving, and reasoning. To support this, we will have a dedicated curriculum day in term three dedicated, which will include whole-staff professional learning by consultant, Peter Sullivan. In Literacy, we will be continuing to build our understanding of and consistency of Literacy practices across the school. - Effective use of team teaching in the learning spaces
Our learning spaces are designed for collaboration and team-teaching and aim to incorporate team-teaching strategies within our teaching program. - Action Reserach Teams
Through inquiry cycles, teachers engage in professional learning as a team and use data to identify professional learning needs, undertake research, and apply their new learnings to our teaching programs. This inquiry cycle will also incorporate reflection as a key component to monitor the impact of the new learning.
Key Improvement Strategy: Strengthen the school’s Instructional Leadership approach to learning.
- Peer Observations
We have investigated significant resources this year to implement peer observations. Based on an identified goal, teachers observe the practice of another teacher in the school and both provide and receive feedback. This aims to build consistency of practice and share pedagogical knowledge. - Build the Capacity of Team Leaders
Leadership is a value we hold strongly and aim to ensure it is distributed across the school. To support this, we strive to build confident and capable team leaders. Through weekly leadership meetings, Team Leaders and leadership engage in discussions that focus on whole school improvement.
Goal: To embed a whole-school approach to health, engagement, and wellbeing.
- Decrease in students reporting low ‘resilience’ from 38% to 80% in our Student Attitudes to School Survey.
- Increase in ‘Confidence’ and ‘Resilience’ from 68% to 80% in our in our Student Attitudes to School Survey.
- Students being absent from school for over 20 days in a calendar year will have decreased from 36% to 25%.
Key Improvement Strategy: Articulate and embed whole school wellbeing practices and approaches.
- Creation of a Wellbeing Team of teachers.
This year, we have a teacher representative from each cohort as a member of our well-being team. Led by Sonya, this team engages in fortnightly discussions about the current well-being needs of our students and aims to undertake and deliver well-being professional learning to staff. The team will also identify processes and practices we can strengthen as a school. - Support teachers to strengthen and develop their students’ resilience.
A key well-being focus this year will be to undertake professional learning to improve our capacity to build our students’ resilience. We will be working with Respectful Relationships and drawing on other resources to build our knowledge. We aim to implement our learning into the weekly well-being sessions in our class timetables. - Improve parent capacity to develop and support their child’s resilience.
To complement our focus on resilience building in school, we also aim to build our families’ understanding of strategies that can be applied to build resilience in children.
Key Improvement Strategy: Develop whole school-targeted intervention practices and protocols that promote attendance
- Review and update the current attendance policy.
We aim to ensure that we have stronger processes to follow up on students’ absences, including identifying absence trends, consecutive days, and cumulative days of absence. We aim to identify when student absences are trending to 15% of days absent and work with families and students to improve attendance. We aim to review our processes and ensure they are communicated and understood by our school community.
Annual Report
Annual Reports are completed each year by the Department of Education and all education statutory bodies (schools). It is a legislative requirement for all schools to prepare an Annual Report for the School Community.
The Annual Report discusses the school demographic including achievement, engagement, wellbeing and productivity. There is also a performance summary in regards to student outcomes and a financial report.
What’s coming up in 2024?
All events listed below are also in the Sentral for Parents calendar.
Term 1
Monday 29th Jan – Thursday 28th March
Term 2
Monday 15th April – Friday 28th June
Term 3
Monday 15th July – Friday 20th September
Term 4
Monday 7th October – Friday 20th December
Term 1
Week 1 Monday 29th January Curriculum Day
Term 2
Week 2 Friday 26th April, Curriculum Day – Wellbeing
Week 8 Friday 7th June, PPD Day
Term 3
Week 5 Monday 12th August Curriculum Day – Mathematics
Term 4
Week 7 Friday 22nd November Curriculum Day (Assessment and Reporting)
Term 1
Week 7 Monday 11th March Labour Day
Week 9 Friday 29th March Good Friday
Term 2
Week 2 Thursday 25th April ANZAC Day
Week 9 Monday 10th June King’s Birthday
Term 3
Term 4
Week 5 Tuesday 5th November Melbourne Cup
Term 1
Thursday 25th January, 11am – 1pm Book Pack Day
Thursday 25th January, 11am – 1pm Second Hand Uniform Sale
Week 1 Thursday 1st February, 9am – 10am Parent Session – Cyber Safety with Sargent Andy Morten
Week 5 Friday 1st March Class Information Session/ Meet and Greet, 2.30 – 3.30
Week 7 – 8 Wed 13th March – Monday 25th March NAPLAN
Week 8 Monday 18th March School Photos
Week 8 Friday 22nd March Ride 2 School Day
Week 9 Students’ Specialist Day Parent Teacher Interviews
Week 9 Thursday 28th March Cultural Celebration 1.30pm – 2.30pm
Week 9 Thursday 28th March Spanish Fiesta 3pm – 7pm
Term 2
Week 5 Friday 17th May Open Learning, 3.00 – 3.30pm
Week 11 Students’ Specialist Day Parent Teacher Interviews
Week 11 Friday 28th June Cultural Celebration, 1.30 – 2.30
Term 3
Week 3 Friday 2nd August Athletics Carnival
Week 3 Friday 2nd August Foundation 100 Days of School
Week 5 Friday 16th August Open Learning, 3.00 – 3.30pm
Week 6 Friday 23rd August Book Week Parade, 2.30 – 3.30
Week 8 Wednesday 4th and Thursday 5th September School Production, Evening, 7pm – 9pm
Week 10 Students’ Specialist Day Parent Teacher Interviews
Week 10 Friday 20th September Cultural Celebration, 1.30 – 2.30
Term 4
Week 2 Thursday 17th October Year 1/2 Sleepover
Week 3 Friday 24th October Foundation Activity Evening
Week 4 Monday 28th October – Tuesday 29th October 3/4 Camp TBC
Week 4 Tuesday 29th October – Thursday 31st October 56 Camp
Week 4 Friday 1st November – Day of the Dead Incursion, Day of the Dead Celebration, 2.30 – 3.30
Week 5 Friday 8th November – Open Learning, 3.00 – 3.30pm
Week 9 – 10 Monday 2nd December – Friday 13th December – Whole School Swimming Program
Week 10 Tuesday 10th December – Whole School Transition, 9am – 11am
Week 11 Students’ Specialist Day Parent Teacher Interviews
Week 11 Friday 20th December Cultural Celebration, 12.30 – 1.30
Term 1
Week 6 Friday 8th March International Women’s Day
Term 2
Week 2 Education Week
Week 4 Friday 10th May Mother’s Day
Week 5 Friday 17th May IDAHOBIT
Week 6 Friday 24th May Sorry Day
Week 6 Monday 27th – Friday 31st May Reconciliation Week
Term 3
Week 1 Mon 15th July – Fri 19th July NAIDOC Week
Week 2 Friday 26th July Paris Olympics
Week 5 Mon 12th August – Friday 16th August Science Week
Week 7 Friday 30th August Wear it Purple Day
Week 7 Friday 30th August Father’s Day
Term 4
Week 3 Friday 25th October Teacher’s Day
Week 3 Friday 25th October Grandparent’s Day
Week 4 Friday 1st November Day of the Dead
Week 6 Wednesday 13th November – Tuesday 19th November Transgender Awareness Week
Term 1
Pre-Term 1 Thursday 25th January Book Pack Day / New buildings Walk Through
Week 4 Sunday 25th February Working Bee
Week 5 Friday 1st March Welcome Picnic, Evening 4pm – 6pm
Week 9 Thursday 28th March Spanish Fiesta 3pm – 7pm
Term 2
Week 5 Friday 17th May Movie Night
Term 3
Week 5 Friday 16th August Parent Social Night
Term 4
School Policies
Newlands Primary School welcomes community feedback on our school policies. If you would like to contribute any thoughts or suggestions regarding any of our policies, please email the school at newlands.ps@education.vic.gov.au.
Policy | Review Date | Approval / Consultation | Aboriginal Learning Action Plan | 2022 | Principal | Administration of Medication | 2025 | Principal |
---|---|---|
Anaphylaxis Management | 2023 | Principal |
Asthma Management | 2023 | Principal |
Attendance | 2025 | Principal/School Council |
Bullying Prevention | 2024 | School Council |
Camps and Excursions | 2025 | Principal/School Council |
Cash Handling | 2023 | School Council |
Child Safe Standards | 2024 | Principal/School Council |
Child Safety Code of Conduct | 2024 | Principal/School Council |
Child Safety and Wellbeing | 2024 | Principal/School Council |
Child Safety Responding and Reporting Obligations | 2024 | Principal/School Council |
Child Safe Standards | 2023 | Principal |
Child Safety Risk Register | 2023 | Principal |
Class Placement | 2026 | Principal |
Communication with Staff | 2026 | Principal |
Complaints | 2024 | Principal/School Council |
Curriculum Framework | 2026 | Principal |
Digital Learning | 2024 | Principal/School Council |
Dogs at School | 2026 | Principal |
Duty of Care | 2024 | Principal |
Electronic Funds Managament | 2023 | School Council |
Enrolment | 2026 | Principal |
Equal Opportunity | 2024 | DET Policy |
First Aid | 2026 | Principal |
Fundraising | 2026 | School Council |
Head Lice | 2026 | DET Policy |
Health Care Needs | 2026 | Principal |
Inclusion and Diversity | 2026 | Principal/School Council |
Mobile Phones | 2026 | Principal |
Parent Payments | 2023 | School Council |
DET Payment | 2023 | Principal | Personal Property | 2026 | Principal |
Petty Cash | 2024 | School Council |
Photographing Filming and Recording Students | 2024 | Principal |
School Purchasing Card | 2023 | School Council |
Statement of Values and School Philosophy | 2026 | School Council |
Student Wellbeing and Engagement | 2024 | Principal/School Council |
Sunsmart | 2024 | School Council |
Visitors | 2023 | Principal/School Council |
Volunteers | 2023 | Principal/School Council |
Working with Children Clearance | 2025 | Principal/School Council |
Yard Duty and Supervision | 2024 | Principal |