Dear Parents and Guardians,    

Welcome to Week 3 and what a wonderful week it has been celebrating Catholic Education Week and our annual School Dance on Thursday night. It was so wonderful to see all the students smiling and enjoying their dance productions that they have been working on and practising over the last term. 

Visitors  

This Term we welcome back Ms Heather Alison - our School Counsellor who is visiting us again in Weipa. Heather will be providing her service to St. Joseph's School from Monday 24th July – Friday 28th July 2023. 

And Week 5 we also have Lorraine Carroll - Speech Language Pathologist from Cairns Catholic Education visiting for a few days and supporting teachers and students.  

Later during the Term, Lillian Miller - Consultant First Nations Education from Cairns Catholic Education to our School. Lillian will continue to provide her service to St. Joseph's School during Term 3. 

 NCCD - Nationally Consistent Collection of Data

The NCCD is an annual collection of information from all Australian schools on the numbers of students with disability and the adjustments they receive. All Teachers at St. Joseph’s School will be expected to understand their obligations to students with disability under the DDA and the Disability Standards for Education 2005 and consistently collect and provide evidence which is recorded on ENGAGE. 

 The children at St. Joseph’s Parish School Weipa have been invited to take part in a survey about student wellbeing and mental health from the between 31/07/2023 and Friday 18/08/2023 The survey will be completed online during school hours and contains between 25-57 questions (depending on the age of your child) and will take 10- 15 minutes to complete.  

 This annual survey is being issued to all students in the Diocese of Cairns by the Student Wellbeing and Diversity directorate of Catholic Education Services. The survey aims to gather student opinions about aspects of the school that relate to supporting student wellbeing and mental health.   

 What is the purpose of the survey? The survey will provide schools with student opinions on what the school is doing well and what they can improve to better promote and support student wellbeing and mental health. Long term this survey may be used to track student wellbeing and mental health over a period of time.  

Kind regards, 

Melanie Turner.