We have officially reached the midpoint of the term and as always things are very busy at South, but particularly as we look towards the end of the school year.  There has certainly been some fantastic learning occurring and great opportunities to engage in an array of activities and events.

We continue to liaise with Port and Star in transitioning our year 6 students who will have their full orientation days over the next couple of weeks. This is always an exciting time for our year 6’s filled with anticipation, nervousness and wondering. We are confident that our current year 6’s will embrace their new adventure as it arrives!

As I have said over the year we have been focused on improving our writing and reading. Our results have shown that we continue to make significant improvement across the school, and our mandated testing in NAPLAN and PAT has been outstanding. We are demonstrating some outstanding growth and median scores in reading and writing well above similar schools and in many areas, Tasmania. This can be attributed to our expert leadership team and dedicated teachers who are willing to engage with our ambitious improvement agenda. There has been a significant shift in how we undertake our literacy teaching over the past 4 years as we continue to build upon the world’s best practice in literacy teaching.

We are continuing to finalise our class and staffing arrangements for 2023. I can announce that we will have two Kinder classes next year with Ange Matthews and Sam Grace being the teachers. They will again be 3 full days on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Staffing and budget are dependant on enrolment numbers so it is essential we know how many students will be attending in 2023. If you know of any families who are planning to enrol South in 2023, please tell them to inform the school as soon as possible. Likewise, if your children won’t be attending next year, please inform us as soon as practicable.