Welcome back to Term 2. It’s been great to catch up with students and engage in conversations about what they have learnt during the school holidays! We would also like to welcome to our Burnie Primary School community, the 10 new students who started this term.

Last Term was certainly a term like no other in living memory. To acknowledge our part in history, we have captured a collage of some of our staff with masks. We captured this collage as an archive photo documenting the way we are working at the moment. Burnie Primary School is one of the oldest schools in Australia (170 this year), and staff have only faced these sorts of challenges that a pandemic brings, one other time during its history, in 1918 – 1920 with the ‘Spanish flu’. 

You can find the details of the Term 2 Covid Operational Plan at: COVID-safe schools plan for Term 2 now available - The Department of Education Tasmania. A feature of the plan is we are to keep our high levels of ventilation throughout all rooms. This will of course be a challenge with windows open etc in the colder months but if it means that heaters will be on and windows open, then that’s what we have been advised to do to make it happen. We have received new tower fans for every classroom to be used to aid ventilation and we have received a number of new air purifiers that will help aid the air quality throughout this term. Please note that as of Monday May 1, the ‘close contact’ rule does not apply for household contacts, but you should be aware of other precautions in place from Public Health on this matter. Students will soon be given a pack of 5 RAT tests to make sure you are able to comply with the new close contact rules. If you require additional RAT tests, they are available at the front office on request. Masks are still required to be worn inside schools this term.

One of our priorities in this year’s school improvement plan is ‘Inquiry’, which we describe in our Strategic Plan as “Learners are engaged in wondering, discovering, making meaning, transferring understanding and reflecting on their thinking”. As we know, for students to be active participants in the 21^st century, we must do more than simply provide knowledge. We provide students with the assets for learning that will equip them to engage in learning throughout life. These evidence-based assets include being able to think deeply and creatively (Thinking), to communicate effectively in a wide range of ways (Communication), to research critically and efficiently (Research), to collaborate with others (Collaboration), and to manage all this with initiative, confidence and independence (Self-management). All students from Kinder to Grade 6 have been developing these ‘Learning Assets’ and we are looking forward to sharing their work with you this year.