Catholic Education Week – Communities of Faith, Hope and Love. 

We have had a successful Catholic Education Week with the highlights being the Dance Performances and community gathering on Thursday evening and our Catholic Education Week Liturgy on Friday. My observations in my time in Weipa, is that you are certainly a community of faith, hope and love!  

We are often challenged as Catholic communities to be stewards of a sustainable future, to celebrate God’s creation and to commit to protect and sustain it. In my role as Principal, I have so much faith in the future because of the qualities I witness in the students I see daily. I see faith in their eyes, love in their touch and hope in their attitude. I believe in children: the fragile dreams of yesterday, life’s radiant reality today, and vibrant substance of tomorrow. I see children at work trying to make this world a better place for everyone – wonderful stewards! 

I did want to address some information regarding funding that parents may not be aware of.  

Catholic schools have been providing a quality education for Australian children for over 190 years. There are 1800 Catholic schools in Australia, with over 750,000 students (312 schools and 160,000 students in Queensland). Roughly one in five students in Australia are educated in a Catholic school. 

However, when all forms of government funding are considered (that is, both Federal and State), Catholic school students receive substantially less funding per student than government school students. 

This means parents and parishes have to contribute more through fees and levies despite Catholic schools striving to keep fees low so that they remain accessible to all children. Even when these contributions are taken into account, on average, Catholic schools operate at about 85% of the resourcing level of government schools. 

So, when someone says that Catholic schools get more government funding than public schools, this is transparently wrong and should be challenged. 

New Playground Update 

We are just waiting on the soft edging to be installed and for the playground to be certified for use by students. We are almost there! We hope to have those actions done in the next couple of weeks (the certifier has to come from Cairns) and then ‘it’s all systems go!’ 

P and F Update 

At the meeting this week the decision was made to canvas other communities of about the size of Weipa to see what methods they use to engage parent voice and connection. It may be that the current once per month at 7pm meeting is not the optimal method. Once we have collated that information, we will communicate the results to parents and seek feedback. 

Head Lice 

All schools experience outbreaks of head lice at time to time. It has nothing to do with whether the hair is clean or not. It is more connected to weather and the current warm, moist conditions aren’t helping. We currently have a number of cases in the community. We would appreciate if all families could regularly check student hair and treat as required. Students presenting at school with head lice will be sent home for treatment as per Queensland Health guidelines as they are quite contagious.  

Parent Survey 

A reminder that the survey closes on August 4 (end of next week). Currently our survey completion rate is quite low and it would be a shame for parents not to take this opportunity to provide feedback regarding both the school and the system processes. The link for the survey was sent to individual parent email addresses.