Dear Parents and Caregivers

Thank you to all parents who supported our Athletics Carnivals recently, particularly to those who assisted Miss Brescacin in various ways. Congratulations to Mercy faction who won the overall carnival and a huge thanks must go to Miss Nat Brescacin for organising both the throws day and this week’s carnival. A huge amount of work goes into these events so we thank Nat for her hard work! We wish all our interschool competitors the best of luck for the Interschool Athletics Carnival next Friday 18 Sept!

CECWA – 0% Fee Increase for 2021

I draw your attention to the letter for parents uploaded to the ConnectedApp this week outlining the recent decision by CECWA regarding a 0% fee increase in 2021 for all Catholic schools. This decision is intended to support families in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent recession.

P & F Meeting

A reminder that we have a P & F meeting scheduled for this coming Monday 14 September at 7.15pm in the staff room. All are welcome!

COVID-19 Survey

Thank you to all parents who participated in our COVID-19 survey. Both staff and parents reflected on our school COVID-19 experience, particularly our period of remote learning, in an effort to learn from this unique experience and plan for the future.

We reflected on what we did well and what we could do differently in three key areas: communication, operations and education. The response from the parent survey was overwhelmingly positive with many parents taking the opportunity to thank the school for the manner in which we responded to the crisis. We thank you for your kind words! It was encouraging to note that as a staff, our reflections were very much in tune with the parent responses, both in terms of what we did well and what we could do differently in the future.

The key themes were that staff and parents felt that our communication and school operations were strong during this time and educationally, the use of both student take-home packs and online programs such as SeeSaw and Microsoft Teams were effective. In general, parents felt that the volume of work sent home ranged from the right amount to too much.

The biggest difficulties experienced by parents during the period of remote learning was trying to support the learning at home of multiple children, supporting learning at home whilst also trying to work from home and the number or age of digital devices in the home.

In terms of future planning, both staff and parents felt that in the future we could now move to more online lessons such as pre-recorded video or real time online lessons. We gratefully took on board several other ideas from the feedback and are currently updating our COVID-19 plan accordingly.

Sacrament of Confirmation 2020

The Archbishop has now lifted the suspension of the celebration of the sacrament of Confirmation. As a result, our year 6 class will celebrate the sacrament of Confirmation on Sunday 8 November at 10.30am. Similar to the First Communion ceremony, this will be a stand-alone Mass for the Confirmation candidates and their families only to ensure that we meet any social distancing requirements that may still be in place at the time. Families will be provided with more information next term.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.

God bless

Dr Siobhan Galos
Principal

principal@stmichaelsbass.wa.edu.au.