It is hard to believe that we are two weeks into the term and have under eight weeks of school remaining for the year. For our eighteen Year 11 and 12 students, the school year concludes next Friday the 4th November. We wish those in Year 12 all the best for their future; we are confident they are well prepared as they commence the next stage in their lives.

The term started with our school community returning under a new department with the establishment of the Department for Education, Children and Young People.

The new Department brings together a range of services and supports for children, young people and their families, including:

• Public Education
• Child Safety
• Youth Justice
• Out of Home Care
• Libraries Tasmania
• Child and Family Learning Centres.

This brings together the diverse skills and experience with a strong commitment to improving the lives of Tasmania’s children and young people. Children, young people, and their families are at the centre of everything this new Department will do and will benefit from:

• improved co-ordination of services and supports
• better sharing of information
• ongoing focus on wellbeing and engagement in learning

By establishing the new Department for Education, Children and Young People, our vision is for a Tasmania where every child and young person is known, safe, well and learning.

Knowing our students underpins all of what we do here at Parklands, ensuring our young people are safe, well and learning. Our school has a strong focus on the wellbeing of our young people and strives to provide the support and care needed to help them thrive and reach their full potential.

Our recent student wellbeing data reflects our commitment and ongoing work to improve student wellbeing. The data below highlights student responses in the high and medium range of wellbeing in the area of loved, safe and valued:

71%      Important adult at school

90%      Connectedness to adults at school

84%      Feel safe at school

86%      Absence of bullying (including physical, verbal, social and cyber)

Student data is so important in both gathering school wide information to support planning and identifying individual student progress and their future learning needs.

Over the next two weeks. we will join schools across Australian to undertake the annual PAT assessment in Reading and Mathematics. Each student is individually assigned a test based on their previous assessment, that will measure growth in their learning over the past year.

Each test has questions that are ‘just right’ for that level, and also has questions that are easier, and more difficult. In this way, the assessment can indicate more precisely where a student is in their learning. In that sense, the students may view the assessments as ‘hard’ because they shouldn’t be able to get them all correct; the intention is that about half of the questions will be right for the student.

The results are available to staff immediately on completion of the test. This helps us enormously with planning for next year.

We ask that you encourage students to do their best, so these diagnostic assessments can be as useful as possible for tailoring our learning programs. Our teachers look forward to sharing students’ progress with them, and as always, you are welcome to contact teachers to discuss progress.