ANNUAL REPORT VERIFICATION
This annual report provides the community and the Chief Executive, Department of Education, Training and Employment with important information on aspects of the operation of our school. Together with the Partnerships Plan, Services Agreement and triennial External Review Report (in the future), it comprises the public and documented components of the Framework for Quality, Improvement and Accountability being implemented at the school as part of our commitment to providing high quality care and education.

The report contains detail on aspects of the school’s core business as outlined in the Services Agreement and describes progress towards the achievement of targets for improvement objectives identified as a priority for the current year.

Copies of the report will be made available to:

•         The Chief Executive through the Office of Review

•         The school community

•         All members of the Governing Council

•         The District Superintendent

The annual report is one significant way in which our school meets accountability requirements. Further, it will be an important resource to assist with the validation of data as part of the external review process.

This report is signed below by the Principal and the Chairperson of the Governing Council to signify that it represents an accurate account of the operations of the school and that it complies with the requirements for the preparation of annual reports.

  Principals              Brian Marshall                            Di Neill

  Chairperson, Governing Council          Merelyn Boyce

Date   26/11/2001

CONTEXT

Our Students

·        96 % of the 449 students attending Happy Valley School are from an English speaking background. The remaining students come from Polish, Greek, Italian, Thai, Phillipine, Swedish, Yugoslav, Slovacia, German, Fijian and Iranian backgrounds.

·        4 % are Students with Disabilities and have Negotiated Curriculum Plans (NCP) to support their learning.

·        35 students receive support from the Early Assistance and Basic Skills funding

·        We have a large data base titled Students Causing Concern which covers students on  NCP’s,  Early Assistance, those with physical or behavioural concerns and those identified as Students with High Intellectual Potential (SHIP).

·        17 % students have been identified as SHIP students who teachers take into account when planning and teaching.

·        During the last two years we have focussed more closely on the learning outcomes of boys through one of our strategic directions.

·        Student attendance and progression rates is interesting data to observe. Our total absences were 3367.5 which on average is about 7-8 days per student. This compares in 1999 with 6-7 days per student . Family reasons accounted for 24% while illness accounted for 59%. There has been an increase in the number of families requesting exemption for their children to attend family holidays. Year levels where there was a high percentage of ‘family reasons’ were in Reception, Yr 1, Yr 4 and Yr 7. Yr 3 had the lowest percentage of children absent for illness and family reasons. A considerable number of late days were recorded – 385 and the Yr 1's accounted for 122 of these late days. We urge all parents to ensure their children are at school on time to teach them organisational skills and good working habits.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR
Our focus throughout this year has been very much on improving student learning outcomes.  So many of our programs and activities directly or indirectly work to improve student learning.  In the classrooms, often out of the classrooms, and even out of the school, students have been excited and stimulated, on their journey as life long learners, supported by our dedicated staff.

Some of our Special Achievements this year are:

·       Parent education programs through Parents Go Bush, Children’s Literature, Parents as Tutors and Program Achieve information sessions and workshops.

·        Student and parent enterprise projects with the Worm Composting project, Vine Propagation and the Edible Garden project.

·        Student Community help through involvement in the Helping Hand Walkathon and the Samaritan’s Purse Christmas Boxes project.

·        Great work done on our Strategic Directions, through developing the SACSA Framework with staff, through embedding Learning Technologies into our curriculum, through implementing the Program Achieve habits of the mind with students.

·       Recognition of 100 years of Australian nationhood through our Federation Assembly and presenting the Commemorative Medals.

·        Support for the Arts and performance through participation in the Come Out ‘Escape to Reality’ events, School Choir performances, Music Night, regular School Assemblies, Performance Day and Tournament of Minds.

·        Year 7 involvement in the outstanding Jason XII Project.

·        Student success in the district Website Design competition and the student developed Chandlers Hill and Happy Valley Kindy websites.

·        Success of our students as reported by our teachers and affirmed by outstanding results in state tests.  For example we had the highest BST Year 3 Boys numeracy levels in the state.

·        The success of our students in many competitions and challenges, including state  and nation representations in sports, six students (out of only 30 places statewide) making the Aberfoyle Park high SHIP program 

·        School community adopting Partnerships 21, a new look Governing Council and Constitution leading to the development of an Asset Management Plan for our physical resources.

·        Team building and success for Shepherd on Sports Day and the two Pedal Prix teams at Murray Bridge.

·        Opening of the Parent Club pergola outside Unit 4.

·       German Teaching Assistants program supporting our primary German program and our continued involvement in the Language focus School progrma with Aberfoyle Park High

·        Successful fundraising through the Readathon, Walkathon, Living in the 70’s Night and Christmas Raffle.

·       Involvement in the Hands Up for Primary Campaign.

·        Variety of Bookweek activities during ‘A Book Odessey’.

·        Continued development of the reserve by ‘Friends of the Panalatinga Reserve’.

·        Hard work and dedication of our school staff.

·        Excellent support from our school community of parents.

Trends Arising

·        Our enrolment was 445 as at August 2001 and compares with 443 in 2000 and 483 in 1999. As the demographics of the area change our enrolments have gradually been declining. Our August prediction for 2002 is 400

·        Decreasing enrolments are affecting our Resource Profile (staffing) and Asset Management Plan.  Our classroom spaces and facilities have always been well used as extra resources e.g. a large computing suite, a technology room, a room for the Learning Assistance Program (LAP). During this year while developing the Asset Management Plan (AMP) we have had to make decisions about some of our spaces.  The Governing Council has decided to sign an Over Capacity Agreement for three rooms and by the end of this year we expect that four other rooms will have been relocated/demolished. We will be closing one block of toilets.

In lieu of the music room going a double transportable is being converted into a new drama/music suite to support our future Arts program.  We will try to hold on to rooms as long as we can to allow for future contingencies.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

We believe we add considerable value to the learning skills, attitudes and capabilities of our students.  Furthermore, we know that we identify students’ learning difficulties early and intervene very effectively.  The information presented in Tables 1 and 2 is based on teacher judgement from all the data available to our teachers.  It shows literacy and numeracy at the following levels, as judged by our teachers: 0 is average for students at that year level, ++ is well above average and – is well below average for students.  This data is also based on a much broader view of literacy and numeracy than the narrowly focused state tests like the BST, which are reported on next.

Table1 Literacy Levels based on teacher judgement of all data

Table 2 Numeracy Levels based on teacher judgement of all data

BST Results
The following sets of datum are based on the Basic Skills Test results for our Year 3&5 students.  They are presented to support the data gathered from our staff.  The results of the Year 7 state tests and the Primary Writing Assessment follow similar patterns, however, we have not included any data on them in this report.  The data shows how we compare against the state averages and against the results of other schools with similar levels of school card numbers and numbers of students from Non English Speaking Background.  Most of our local schools are in the same category (Cluster 2) as us.  Skills Band 1 is the lowest literacy or numeracy level.

Table 3  Our School Year 3 Literacy results compared to like schools and the state

Table 4  Our School Year 5 Literacy results compared to like schools and the state

Table 5 Our School Year 3 Numeracy results compared to like schools and the state

Table 6  Our School Year 5 Numeracy results compared to like schools and the state

Trends and Issues

• We have high expectations and achieve high levels of success: Our staff judge our students be at lower levels of achievement than the state test results would indicate.  For example, our year 3 BST numeracy scores are incredibly high (73% of students in the top 2 bands) with our boys scoring the highest results in the state.  Our Year 3 teachers have very few students (5%) in the well above average category, judging that about 50% are above average.  Our Year 5 BST Literacy results show that 72% of students are in the top two bands.  This is much higher than the 55% average in schools judged to be like ours.  Again our Year 5 teachers judge our students literacy levels to be at a lower level than the state tests. 
• Our data and the state test data confirms that we have had a strong impact on improving the literacy levels for boys.
• Our Year 7 state test results are in conflict with the judgements we have made about the literacy and numeracy levels of that group of students.  Our state test literacy results (an average of 61.0 per student) were above the state average results (an average of 59.7) and the same as our like schools. Our state test numeracy results (an average of 65.7 per student) were above the state average results (an average of 64.3) but a little lower than our like schools (66.5).  We certainly have not got the huge continued growth that we might have expected.  On the other hand our teachers judge a greater number of those students to be achieving at a high levels of literacy and numeracy.  Our Year 7 students have certainly produced outstanding work through the many different ways we conduct our middle schooling focus, which seems to support our teachers judgements over the state test results.  Perhaps there are implications for the relevance of this type of testing for young adolescents, particularly when our other forms of assessment now call for far creative, innovative investigations involving teams and valuing a whole range of learning styles.
• We believe we must continue the significant funding of our targeted intervention programs as they are having a measurable impact on those students causing concern.  Congratulates to our teachers and SSOs who provide the one to one work that makes this possible.  Also most $20000 in additional school funds have been spent in each of the past two years to support these programs

Reception – 2
At the end of each year we test the Year 1 and 2 students on the Waddington  Reading test and the Westwood Spelling test. The results are as follows

READING DATA – Using the Waddington test  

SPELLING DATA – Using the Westwood test  

Trends and Issues
The Reading scores are much the same as previous years, which are of a high standard. The Spelling scores have increased considerably on previous years. Both sets of scores include all children on the Early Intervention program and those with Negotiated Curriculum Plans.

Teachers have included explicit teaching strategies particularly in spelling this year and the support from the SSO's who work with the Early Intervention students is excellent.

Early Intervention
At the beginning of this year a Junior Primary committee reviewed our policy. We wanted to be much more specific about what we would assess, so we developed a checklist, which focussed on phonological awareness, listening skills, sequencing and writing. Students identified by teachers through observation and First Steps, were tested by an SSO using the new checklist. Children were tested and monitored at three stages - on entry to the program, and at 7 and 14 weeks. We funded two 14 week programs.  Fifteen students were on the first program and 6 continued into the second program. All children were able to access other literacy programs because of the confidence and new skills they'd gained.

Our budget for Early Intervention was $9,000 which included government funding and funds from the global budget. Support for this very successful program will continue next year.

School Entry Assessment (SEA)
As part of the SACSA Framework all Reception students are assessed during their first 10 weeks at school. This year was the first year we assessed both Literacy and Numeracy. Teachers take into account family profiles, preschool data and classroom observation and plot students on a continuum. Teachers need release time to implement this assessment which is based on teacher judgement as although it is thorough, it is very time consuming. We have applied for 'mentored' school funding for 2002 to support teachers to make better use of the assessment tool. The following table shows a comparison of previous and current data.

SCHOOL ENTRY ASSESSMENT DATA (SEA)

Trends and Issues
The literacy data for this year is in contrast to 2000. This year there has been a wider range of levels with less students in Level 1 than in 2000. This demonstrates how much more familiar and skilled we are with this new tool. We believe that this year's data is more realistic.

PARTNERSHIPS PLAN OBJECTIVES
We established 3 strategic directions in our Partnerships Plan for 20001-2003.  Our Annual Plan identified objectives and strategies to meet targets we had set for this year. In this section we will report on the progress we have made towards meeting our long term and short term targets.

Smarter Use of Learning Technologies
Our 3 year objectives are to

§         Embed the use of Learning Technologies in all curriculum areas

§         Enhance student learning by the use of Learning Technologies

Some key targets associated with this strategic direction were:

1.      By the end of 2001  100% of staff can demonstrate planning for LT in all curriculum areas for which they are responsible

2.      By December 2002, 100% of Year 3-7 students produce a multimedia product

3.      By 2002 all years 3-7 students are using the school’s intranet to publish work

4.      By December 2001 all classes use their Intranet sites

5.      By December 2003 we can measure high quality student learning as a result of using LT across the whole school and this can be supported by evidence in student electronic folders.

In striving for the above targets we have also focused on the following via our 2001 Annual Plan:

§         By Dec 01 all students use the Intranet

§         By Dec 01 50% of Year 3-7 students produce a multimedia product

§         By Dec 01 all staff have developed understandings of what high quality student learning can look like when using LT smartly

Considerations for the Next Planning Cycle

We don’t think we have quite achieved our target of all teachers considering using LT when planning all topics.  We are getting there, however.  We believe that this was a very ambitious target and that we have made great progress towards reaching it.  Some of the successful strategies we used were: