Welcome Back
Welcome back to the entire Elevation community for what is shaping up as an exciting 2026!
As well as welcoming a new group of Year 7 students, our second cohort of Year 12 students are beginning their final year of schooling.
We have already seen some amazing learning happening in our classes and we’re very pleased to see so many of our students greeting each other and their teachers with pleasantries. Students are also displaying our Behavioural Expectations of Aim High, Work Hard and Be Good to a very high standard.
Building Rectification Works
Many of our students have returned to school this year amazed at the transformation of many of our learning spaces and classrooms. Our teachers and students have been very excited to make use of these greatly improved spaces and classrooms.
As outlined in newsletters last year, between the last week of school in December and the first day of school this year, the Victorian School Building Authority has completed $3million worth of improvements to our classrooms. The change is extraordinary and has completely altered many of the spaces. Our three learning communities now have no open plan spaces and additional classrooms.
The works included:
· Completely enclosing several existing open plan classrooms
· Converting underutilised spaces into additional classrooms
· Creating an additional 3 Science Classrooms and 3 Visual Art Classrooms
· Adding 2 new Relocatable Music classrooms and an additional Science Laboratory
The works have improved our already strong learning environments and have been completed to a high standard which will last for many years.
Thanks to the Victorian School Building Authority, Case Meallin and Alchemy Projects for completing the works with almost zero disruption to the school and the learning program.
Welcome Year 7 Students
In recent weeks we have welcomed our seventh cohort of Year 7 students to the school. The students settled in well on their first day of learning and were welcomed by an assembly and two days’ worth of Orientation. Our new Year 7 students have already begun demonstrating Aim High, Work Hard and Be Good to a very high level.
I’d like to make a special shoutout to 7B who were so polite and welcoming when I visited their PE class last week. What a wonderful group of Elevation students!
Welcome BBQ Postponement – Year 7 Families
Unfortunately we had to postpone our Welcome BBQ for new Year 7 students and their families due to poor weather. We are working on finding an alternative date or a different type of event to welcome Year 7 students and families.
Year 7 and 9 Families – Important NAPLAN Update
Later in this newsletter you will be notified of important information with regard to this year’s NAPLAN testing period.
I would like to highlight the importance of these tests to families – specifically that students try their absolute best when completing the testing. We encourage all students who complete the tests to use the entirety of the time allocated and complete as many questions and sections of each test as they can.
Please take the time to read the NAPLAN Exams section of this newsletter which appears on page 7. If you have questions, please contact Ms Jessica Smith or Mr Alex Mangione.
Conferences
Wednesday March 25th is our Student Learning Conference day. This is an amazing opportunity for families to meet teaching staff and for students to talk through their learning and progress with families and their teachers.
Information on booking will come out in coming weeks via Compass.
Curriculum Day and Key Dates
Friday 6th March is a student free day where staff will be working through a range of professional learning with regard to the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model 2.0.
Key dates are published later in this newsletter as well as in Compass.
Potential Industrial Action
You may have seen in the news recently that there is a possibility of industrial action being taken by school staff in Victoria and there is a strong possibility that Tuesday March 24 may be a day of stopwork action.
Nothing has been confirmed yet however it is important to be aware of that date and the possibility of disruption to schools. Once confirmed, our school will need to act very quickly to determine arrangements for that day and communicate these to parents. If you have children at multiple schools you should know that each school will have different arrangements on that day.
We will endeavour to give you as much information as soon as possible, once more information comes to light.
Aspire
You may have already noticed a difference in our Aspire rewards system this year. More students are getting more points for displaying positive behaviour than ever before. Our teachers are actively on the lookout to award students positive points to a level we haven’t seen before!
Later in the term we will be publishing a greatly expanded menu of rewards that students will be able to purchase with their points and there will be some extraordinary rewards available.
Traffic
We are now a large school with over 1000 enrolments and limited roads coming to and from the school. Traffic at drop off and pick up is getting busier and busier.
We urge all drivers to drive with an abundance of caution around the school. Student safety is our number 1 priority and we need all members of the community to exercise safety and caution when driving near the school.
The long promised road safety improvements to Elevation Boulevard have not yet been started or completed. As such it is the responsibility of all drivers to keep all students safe.
Colin Burke
Principal