STAFFING NEWS
At the end of Term 2 Mr Andrew Wood, Deputy (Years 4-6) will be leaving Wyvern to return to the UK for family and professional reasons. Andrew joined Wyvern House in 2010 following a successful teaching and school leadership career in the UK. Since his appointment Andrew has made a most positive contribution to the learning and teaching environment of the school including launching our learning framework ‘Building Learning Power’. Furthermore, he has been heavily involved in an overhaul of ICT at Wyvern including the introduction of our iPad program for all Year 5 and Year 6 students. We wish Andrew and his family every success for their future pathways.

We will be conducting a national advertising campaign to secure a high calibre Deputy (Year 4 –Year 6) with an anticipated start date of January 2014. In the interim, Ms Sandra Gray will take on the substantive Deputy role (Years K-6) and will be the main point of contact for pastoral matters.  She will be supported by Mrs Melanie Bryden, who will take on the role of Academic Administrator. Mrs Bryden will also maintain her class teaching commitment for Terms 3 and 4.

NAPLAN
Much has been reported in the media about NAPLAN. There is an emerging view that some schools and parents are placing a disproportionate emphasis on NAPLAN assessments, especially as a school’s aggregate NAPLAN results are used by the media to form the basis of ‘informal’ school league tables.  Hence, there are rumours and reports of some schools bowing to pressure and falling into the trap of over preparing students or making major changes to timetables in order to ‘teach to the tests’.

At Wyvern we place a strong emphasis on maintaining a balanced and engaging curriculum in both the lead up to, and during NAPLAN testing week. We challenge, encourage and support your son to achieve his personal best in the tests, but we do all we can to ensure that the classroom climate is one of low anxiety. Judging from the positive feedback from students about their experience of NAPLAN testing it does seem that our approach strikes the right balance. I congratulate Year 5 and Year 3 students and their teachers for their excellent effort shown during this week’s NAPLAN assessments.

MOTHER’S DAY BREAKFAST
I thank the P & F, and in particular the Year 3 parents, for organising an excellent  Mother’s Day breakfast last Friday morning.  The wonderful attendance and superb tone made the event a very special one. I also thank the hard work of the small team of Year 1 parents who co-ordinated the selection, ordering and distribution of Mother’s Day gifts.

Mr Ian Holden
Head of Wyvern House