It’s been a joy to catch up with everyone and welcome you all to the 2022 school year. This time of year brings great excitement and anticipation and it’s been a pleasure to share this with students and families.  All students look fantastic in their school uniforms, and we have had students settled into their new classes and focussed on their learning.

I would like to welcome our significant number of new families to our school community, and I am looking forward to working with you as partners in your children’s learning. Obviously, the start to the school year has been different, but the resilience of students, teachers and staff has been outstanding in adapting to ensure we provide a safe learning environment for all. Thank you to our parent / carers for your cooperation at drop off and pick up times in limiting your time on site and wearing your masks to help keep us all safe. More frequently asked questions for parents can be found at COVID-19 - The Department of Education Tasmania

We welcome to our Burnie Primary School learning community, our new teachers, Miss Kerryn Duncan (Assistant Principal), Ms Patti Page (Grade 5) and Mrs Vicki Brumby (Indonesian). Unfortunately, Ms Page has badly broken her hand on Sunday which will now require surgery and so thanks to Miss Alanna Smith for settling class 5P into their school year for yesterday and today. From tomorrow, Miss Meaghan Hosking will be leading 5P for the next 4 weeks or so, so welcome back Miss Hosking.

As part of our planning for the beginning of the 2022 school year, we have been preparing in the event that any of our teachers may have to isolate this term. We have developed a Response Plan that ensures that we minimise the impact on the learning for students and provide consistency for our learners. We have been able to do this by utilising our current grade structures to provide planning uploaded for the first 5 weeks initially, to allow for relief teachers or any other specialist teacher or members of our leadership team to be able to provide as close as possible, the learning intentions that are the same across the grades. Burnie Primary is fortunate in this sense to be able provide for this proactive response plan that prioritises student learning. All teaching staff have spent their planning time uploading their planning, timetables, specific student needs and routines to allow us to swing the Response Plan into action if required. Another example of our collaborative, creative and innovative learning community in action.

During this time especially, communication is important to us. We encourage everyone to download the Burnie Primary SchoolZine app to ensure we are able to push out notifications as required. In the next few days, you will also be receiving information on our newly updated SeeSaw app that will provide you with the opportunity to communicate directly with your child’s teacher/s and will be used to share with you the evidence of learning your child will be achieving throughout the year.

As always, please don’t hesitate to contact your child’s teacher if you have any information that may help us provide the best possible learning outcome for your child.