On Tuesday, we had a visit from Her Excellency Governor of Tasmania, Kate Warner, and her husband Dick, who were really impressed by the high standards and quality of the educational provisions provided here at Burnie Primary School. We were selected for a visit on recommendation from our Secretary of Education as recognition of excellence and innovation in educational provision, before, during and after the restrictions were put in place for Covid-19 last term. We were able to showcase to her our coding and robotics program in the Makers Space, Tasmanian Aboriginal culture and history from Grade 4s and a Q & A with Grade 3FH, before finishing with a visit to Kindergarten where she enjoyed a game of hopscotch. She was suitably impressed with Burnie Primary School’s vision for our learners and how it reflects the skills and capabilities that are required for learners as they move through their educational journey and into the workforce.

With camps off the agenda for the rest of the year, we are still able to go on excursions. Grade 4 will start this with our on-country visits to Pinmatik / Rocky Cape and a follow-up excursion to the Arthur River/Kings Run and Preminghana next month. These on-country visits are a truly valuable way of taking the learning further as we learn from our Aboriginal guides the true history of Tasmania and the rich cultural heritage of our Tasmanian Aboriginal communities which is one of the oldest living cultures in the world.

Our School Association met again Tuesday evening and one major discussion point was our need for more classroom space as we look forward into the future to cater for our already ‘full’ school that will have to cater for the expected increase in ‘in area’ enrolments as our ‘intake area’ has been increased to Cooee Creek from next year, and takes in five new subdivisions. We have again submitted our proposal to the Department of Education, with support from Discovery Early Learning who run the day long and after school care, and the Burnie City Council who were able to provide some demographic projections for the new and proposed subdivisions in our intake areas. We are hoping in the current climate where stimulus packages are being proposed, that our genuine need for an upgrade of classrooms will be considered favourably by our Government.     

Being Safe is one of our school expectations. We have been concerned that during pick up times at the end of the school day, some parents are getting their children to jump in their cars whilst still on Van Diemens Crescent, or on the move in the school car park. We have a designated student pick up and drop off zone in our carpark to minimise risks during these times and we would appreciate your support in using this zone at the beginning and end of the school day. We appreciate the congestion during this time and thank you for your patience, especially during pickup but we believe it’s worth it! Also, we have seen an increasing number of students being dropped off to school before 8:30am in the mornings. Supervision of students does not begin here at school until 8:30am and we would appreciate it if students could be dropped off after 8:30am of a morning.

Andrew Starick
Principal