Hello, and welcome to the fourteenth of my monthly Principal's blogs. This month I provide an update on the school playground, highlights of our school excursion, Kindy for a Day and more.
Update
Our playground installation is being scheduled for the school holidays, as are the final construction works which were delayed due to ongoing investigation and repair of a minor roof leak. I am pleased to say these items have both now been resolved and we look forward to completing the scheduled works during the holiday period.
The Board of Directors and I recently held a productive Strategy Planning Day, where we reviewed parent feedback of how the school is progressing and established goals and priorities for the school moving forward based on these responses and the collective experience of our team. We look forward to further developing our Strategic Planning documents in the months ahead and sharing them publicly once complete.
Enrolment
Enrolments for Richard Gill School are always open, and in 2022 will open to Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2. Our prospectus, enrolment form, parent info and fee information can be found here.
Kindy for a Day
Today we have hosted our first-ever “Kindy for a Day” program for prospective Kindergarten students. It was very exciting to have another group of students in the school, as we start to envisage how the school will look as we grow in size in 2022. The group of children who participated had a wonderful time. The current students loved having new friends to meet and play with too!
School Events
It has been a busy month at RGS where our students have participated in a Musica Viva concert “Wyniss” hosted at Muswellbrook PS, hosted the Power FM School Breakfast with live broadcast held here at the school in addition to a visit from our local Police Liaison Officer, Constable Gray.
Donations
With the end of financial year approaching, we have received a number of enquiries about donations to the school. A reminder that we are a registered charity and can provide a tax-deductable gift receipt for any financial contributions made to the school which we can allocate towards scholarships, building works or teaching resources.
An enormous thank you to Greg Butcher and his wife Kathy for their donation of a 2-octave contrabass Marimba from Optimum Percussion. This will be a wonderful addition to our Orff ensemble. It has been wonderful to chat with Greg about his own musical experiences and connection with Richard.
Media
I recently read an excellent article about the importance of play in the early development of children. Many of the points made by the author, who is talking in response to a 2020 meta-analysis of 78 different research papers spanning four decades of research published in Developmental Review, resonated with me, such as “Physical play creates fun, exciting situations in which children have to apply self-regulation.”
Read more here
To share with you a snippet of our vision document composed by Richard in 2018, it states “We need to allow the children to be children for as long as possible without compromising their learning and without the imposition of endless testing.” It would seem Richard was ahead of the curve in this area, as he was in so many other areas.
Yours in Music,
Chris English – Principal, Richard Gill School