Principal’s Blog 004. Looking Forward to Stage 1 of School Construction

Principal’s Blog 004

Hello, and welcome to the fourth of my monthly Principal's blogs. I will be sharing a new blog post on the first Friday of each month and in this post I will provide an update of the school’s development, recruitment, uniform and an insight to our school house names.

Update

Last Friday Richard Gill School received a site visit from representatives at NESA (NSW Education Standards Authority) as part of the final phase of official school registration. The meeting was very positive and NESA expressed that they were happy with where things were up to with the school registration. We are now only awaiting approval of the DA before we expect to receive formal registration as a new, independent school in NSW.

School Development

The DA for Richard Gill School is currently on public exhibition until July 13, since going live on Monday June 15. To make a submission regarding the proposed development, please visit here.

We expect internal construction to commence mid-late August. We are extremely excited to see the school construction start to take shape.

Recruitment

We are in the final stages of recruiting our inaugural Classroom Infants Teacher, after receiving some outstanding applications. I look forward to announcing the successful teacher in due course, which will of course be extremely exciting to those children already enrolled and for those families waiting to see how things progress.

Enrolment

Enrolments for 2021 are now being accepted, with 5 children already confirmed for our Kindergarten class in 2021. Please do not delay in returning your enrolment form. Our prospectus, enrolment form, parent info (NESA) and fee information can be found at here.

Uniform and School Houses

Feedback from our 5 enrolled families about the uniform has now been provided, and I will be deciding on the final product very soon, keeping our red-top, black-bottom style as shared previously. Thanks to our families who let us take these pictures to share with you all.

After much consideration, the school have decided on names for our school houses which are based on neighbouring National Parks – Barrington, Wollemi and Towarri. The colours for each school house will reflect the colours in our logo and colour scheme, with Barrington being a teal/blue, Wollemi red and Towarri yellow.

Research

Recently I have been reading numerous research papers by Professor Margaret Barrett, who for many years has been based at The University of Queensland but is moving to Monash University. Margaret has focused much of her research around music education, particularly early childhood music education, and worked closely with Richard Gill on the evaluation of his pioneering “National Music Teacher Mentoring Program”. I am excited to begin considering how Richard Gill School can contribute to our local community in the early childhood music space for pre-school aged children and their parents in Muswellbrook. Watch this space!

Open Days

On my mind is also the rescheduling of a physical parent information session on site at the school for prospective (and already enrolled) families. I continue to closely monitor the Covid-19 situation and will announce a parent information session once I am confident we can proceed without issue. I hope for this to take place around mid-August. Further to this, once construction of Stage 1 is complete, a series of Open Days will be organised to allow families, public and followers of Richard to visit the school, which would likely take place in December or January.

Exciting times as always!

Yours in Music,

Chris English – Principal, Richard Gill School