Key Messages

• There is a lot happening in the next two weeks various excursions and incursions for students across the school. Please be sure to check the diary for important dates and look out for emails and permission notes.
• Please make sure that you are adhering to due dates for payments for events. Often we are unable to accept late payments and it leads to disappointment for our students.
• NAPLAN results have gone home. Below is a breakdown of how we fared as a school against other schools.
• Selective High School results came out last Friday, with an email sent to parent from the selective schools unit. Congratulations to our students who were successful in obtaining a place.
• Yet another reminder not to use the staff car park for pick up and drop off, save for those needing the disabled drop off spot. Wet weather does not change this rule!

Celebrations

• Congratulations to Eloise P, Henry W, Mason P and Hugo M on their outstanding speeches as part of the BLC Public Speaking competition. Special congratulations must go to Mason who was crowned the champion!
• Well done to our Junior and Senior dance groups who have had a big week of performances at the Sydney and Hawkesbury Eisteddfod’s. Congratulations to our Senior Dance group of winning second place at the Hawkesbury Eisteddfod!
• Our junior dance group stole the show at the Blacktown Festival of Performing Arts, while our students did a brilliant job as part of the amazing combined-schools choir.
• Nathan D finished with an Honourable Mention award at the OSIC state finals for drumming.
• Congratulations to Pranav and Archer who both had excellent results as part of the Premiers Spelling Bee finals.
• Our Zone Athletics representatives competed at their carnival today. A full breakdown of results will be included in the next newsletter.

Have we moved to Melbourne? After a week of horrendous rain and freezing cold wind, the sun has come out and things have started to warm up this week, before more rain and wind yesterday, before the sun came out again. While I don’t know what next week will bring weather wise, this past fortnight has shown me that, no matter the weather, Kings Langley PS students continue to shine bright. Whether they are showing off their public speaking, dancing, singing, sporting prowess or academic genius, we have superstars all through the school. And this past fortnight you could see them on full display from the Opera House through to Blacktown International Sportspark; from the Hawkesbury through to Wyndam College; from Kings Langley PS through to Quakers Hill PS… KLPS students are slowly taking over the city!

Over the past fortnight, our school representatives have been competing at the Blacktown Learning Community Public Speaking Competition. This event is a favourite on the calendar each year as the student friendly topics allow students more flexibility and creativity to put together their own speech on things that are important to them. Each school from across the 26 schools in the learning community is able to send one competitor in each year group competition. After class and school finals, we selected our representatives in each division, with Eloise P (Year 3), Henry W (Year 4), Mason P (Year 5) and Hugo M (Year 6) travelling to Quakers Hill PS to compete for the title of best public speaker in the region. It is an extremely competitive event and the standard of speeches is exceptionally high. All four of our representatives did an exceptional job and I had many of my colleagues from other schools commenting on how good our speakers were. While all of the students did an excellent job, Mason was the star of the event, winning the highly coveted Year 5 division with his speech on ‘Inspiring People’. Mason chose to talk about ultra-marathon runner Nedd Brockmann, who has raised millions of dollars for various charities. Hey may not have raised millions of dollars (yet), but Mason is pretty inspiring himself. Congratulations Mason on a massive achievement. We are all incredibly proud of you!

Mason’s achievements are just the tip of the iceberg. On Sunday our junior and senior dance groups made their way out to the Opera House to join thousands of other students from across the state in participating in the Sydney Eisteddfod. While our students always love the opportunity to perform, the concert hall at the iconic Opera House is slightly more exciting than the Kings Langley Public School hall, and that excitement was palpable when you spoke to the children. The audience would have seen their faces beaming as they danced up a storm, but for me the event was a success based on the smiles backstage before they came on to dance. Their performance was exceptional and they should be very proud of themselves.

After a big day on Sunday, our junior dance group then backed up with another performance at the Blacktown Festival of Performing Arts at Wyndam College. It was another magical showcase of talent and while I might be incredibly biased, I really think they were the stars of the show. Their homage to Aladin was characterised by beautiful costumes, wonderful choreography and flawless dancing… and if the student’s faces were anything to go by, they were having the absolute time of their lives. The other performance that I thought was fantastic was a beautiful contemporary dance by students from Wyndam High School. A former Kings Langley PS student was part of that group as well, so that must have been why I thought it was so good.

The dance groups were joined on Monday night by students from our school choir, who joined with children from across the region to form the combined choir. In front of a sell out crowd of just under 1000 people, the students sang an array of songs that entertained all those in attendance. While all of the songs had the crowd bopping along, the sheer variety of songs performed meant that there was something for everyone. As I sat and tried to pick out our students in amongst the sea of students, I couldn’t help but notice the beaming smiles on their faces as they performed for us all. It was truly heartwarming to see so much joy written across their faces. I noticed the smiles on Lani B and Harrison S seemed to get even bigger as they sung “When I grow up” from Matilda the Musical, followed by “If I only had a brain” from The Wizard of Oz… I’m not sure what to make of that, but they were certainly having the time of their lives. Speaking with Charleigh D the following day, she told me her favourite was “Dance Monkey”. When I explained what I had thought watching the show, she told me that everyone was smiling because the teachers/conductors were making them laugh because of their funny costumes. Another wonderful memory for our students.

As if two days of dancing wasn’t enough, on Tuesday it was our senior dance group’s turn to travel out to the Windsor Function Centre for the Hawkesbury Eisteddfod. Once again, our students performed brilliantly and were a credit to themselves and the school. It had been a long few days for some of the students, but their behaviour was exceptional once again and I cannot stress enough how proud we all were of their efforts. Moreover, the students came away with a 2^nd place finish, topping off a wonderful few days for our performing arts groups!

While it goes without saying that these events only occur following a huge amount of dedication and commitment from staff and students alike, I also wanted to acknowledge the sacrifices from staff to give up their Sunday/Monday nights to support our students in having these moments. Thank you to Mrs Davidson, Mrs Hutton, Miss Karadjov, Miss Priest, Mrs Pullinger, Miss Tobin and Miss Trenbath for your herculean efforts. Thank you also to our parents who attended any of the performances, and for those who weren’t able to attend, thank you for transporting your children all over Sydney to have these opportunities. I have no doubt that our students formed some core memories over the last week and they wouldn’t have happened without our staff and families support, so thank you to you all!

Also in the performing arts, Nathan D represented the school at the Oz Schools Instrumental Championships (OSIC). I had the distinct privilege of seeing Nathan’s performance and it was simply amazing. I thought I was watching a rock concert and had to keep reminding myself that Nathan is only in Year 5! While Nathan was unlucky not to win, he was only three points behind the student who did take home the state title and was awarded the Honourable Mention award for his accomplished performance. This is no small feat considering he was up against the best drummers from across the state, and I have very little doubt that we will be chasing Nathan for an autograph at a concert in the not-too-distant future.

This past fortnight also saw the finals of the Premier’s Spelling Bee take place. Held over Zoom, schools from as far East as Bondi, as far West as the Blue Mountains, as far South as Jervis Bay and as far North as Hornsby were represented in this prestigious event. Our school was proudly represented by the two winners of our school final. First up was the Stage 2 division, where Pranav A from 4WD put his spelling prowess against the best from the region. He did an exceptional job, navigating some tricky words before being knocked out in Round 4. Following his mighty effort was Archer E in the Stage 3 competition. Archer also did exceptionally well, moving through the rounds with ease before getting stuck on an incredibly tricky word with just 6 students left. Considering the number of schools involved and the breadth of the area covered, this was an outstanding achievement for both children. I had the privilege of sitting with them throughout the contest and it was lovely to watch their nerves fade away with each round and their confidence grow. It was also nice to see how proud they were to progress so far into their respective competitions… and so they should! Thanks must go to Mrs Owen for her hard work in coordinating the event and allowing our children the opportunity to shine.

Today, our school representatives competed in the Seven Hills/Wentworthville Zone Athletics Carnival. A full report will be included in the next edition of the Log, but needless to say, we had a number of superstars who did incredibly well. Stay tuned!

The next fortnight is another busy one with excursions for Kindy and Stage 2, Michelle Rowland visiting Stage 3, the K-2 Athletics Carnival, Jersey Day, the Todd Woodbridge Cup, the SRC Book Swap and the Smooth Walking transition program for our Year 5 students. I might need to start writing the next newsletter now! We also have our annual donuts with dad celebrations next Thursday, which has now been paired up with our Book Parade, which was rescheduled due to the wet weather. Hopefully this means that we see even more parents up at the school for both events. In a crowded calendar, it is always hard to find a date for events that have been cancelled due to the weather. We know that parents need as much notice as possible in order to get time off work for these events, so we hoped that by rescheduling the Book Parade to Donuts with Dad, we have been able to support our families to be able to attend both events if they wish. I know that the teachers have some great costumes planned and are looking forward to the day. I can’t wait to see what the students wear- every year I am blown away by your creativity!

Earlier this term, students in Year 3 and 5 received their individual student reports from their NAPLAN test. As a school, we are provided with broader results that help to drive our teaching and learning programs, strategic planning and teacher professional learning. Historically, our NAPLAN results have always been strong, but we are always looking for ways to improve our curriculum offerings to best support our students. Each year our results are compared against the state average for the same test as well as statistically similar school groups (SSSG). SSSG are a collection of schools who share a similar demographic to our school. This is a good yardstick to see where your programming sits as you are being compared against schools that are similar to your own. Below are our results for 2025 against these two markers.

As you can see from the above results, our results were once again very strong. Our Year 5 results in 2024 were very good, but 2025 results were equally pleasing, with significant growth in spelling, while maintaining good results in most other areas. Numeracy was the one area where we identified an opportunity for improvement moving forward as our results did decrease on the previous year’s results (though they were still above our historical average).

It was a similar story in Year 3, with strong growth in spelling and a slight decline in numeracy results. Year 3 also had a significant improvement in reading scores, with a decline in writing scores. The work for us is to maintain the positive results in spelling in reading, while also boosting our writing and numeracy scores.

Each year, the most important data we get is called ‘value added’. This tells us how each individual child has progressed from Year 3 to Year 5. Looking at Year 3 or Year 5 results year-on-year has challenges because they are a different cohort of students. Value added data is incredibly valuable because it allows us to compare the same children along their educational journey, irrespective of their starting point. As I regularly say to parents, our goal is to help each individual child be the best version of themselves, whatever that looks like. Value added data is the best metric of this objective. Due to it’s individual nature, it is difficult data to share publicly without identifying students, but it forms a huge part of our future planning on how to support our students more effectively.

Academics and NAPLAN performance is only a small part of what we do as a school. As you all would know, we focus firmly on the ‘whole child’ and developing each individual across a broad range of domains. While we are obviously proud of our students and the results they achieve, it doesn’t form the basis for what we deem as success. Rather, it provides one data point on one part of our schooling and helps us to drive planning and programming in this area.

Last Friday, Selective High School results were confirmed for children who sat the exam. Parents should check their email for details regarding their child’s performance and potential offers from selective schools. This year we had twelve children sit the exam, with four obtaining an offer of placement while a fifth student was placed on the reserve list. Congratulations to all those students who were successful in gaining a place.

The recent wet weather has been very frustrating for our students who are all keen to get outside and play. Sadly, it has also led to a handful of parents using the carpark for picking up/dropping off students. This is yet another reminder that this is not allowed, irrespective of the weather. I know the rain can make it difficult, but student safety always trumps convenience. Parents needing the disabled drop off are the only parents who should be accessing our carpark at these times. Thank you for your support.