Our School

School Vision

The students, teachers and community of Kent Park Primary School, embrace the values of Kindness, Respect and Responsibility.

We are a collaborative learning environment which empowers all students to reach high standards, take pride in themselves and become life-long learners.

Our Values

Kent Park Primary School is committed to providing a safe, secure and stimulating learning environment that caters for the diverse academic, social, physical, emotional and cultural needs of all students.

Kent Park Primary School is a registered School-Wide Positive Behaviour school. The SWPB framework brings together school communities to be curious, resilient, resourceful and reflective learners.

Our school values of Kindness, Respect and Responsibility are central to our focus of developing the whole child; academically, socially and emotionally.

School Wide Positive Behaviour

Staff 2024

Principal – Kieran Denver
Assistant Principal – Nikki Burns
Business Manager – Sue Mayne
Administration – Lisa Tavella
School Dog – Bear
IT – Jon Knight

Classroom Teachers
Junior School Team
Dawn Nacha, Susan Hogan, Jade Douma, Nikki Burns, Lexie McLeod, Kim Barsenbach

Middle School Team
Sharon Coulston, Claire Zolich, Kim Sambrooks

Senior School Team
Victoria Kontra, Sarah Moore

Specialist Team
Physical Education – Ronnie McComb
STEAM – Ronnie McComb
Visual Arts – Megan Relph
Performing Arts – Neil Butler
Library – Tessa Halifax
Tutor – Leah Hughes

*We are proud to share that all of our teaching staff teach and facilitate Auslan in all classrooms and specialist areas.

Educational Support Staff
Karen Bennett, Michelle Baylis-Clarke, Kerri Maida, Christine Seymour, Samantha Doughty, Lauren Dellar, Jack Wadley, Emmerson Hickleton, Brianna Calf, Ashley Mayne, Michelle Anderson

Bear the School Dog

Meet Bear… Bear is our friendly and charming school dog, who will often greet students, families and visitors at our school office. Bear visits classrooms during learning times and can often be seen helping Mr Denver in our playground. One of Bear’s special responsibilities during Remote Learning was to deliver Kent Park Merit Awards to students’ homes.

Curriculum

English

Developing a highly effective Literacy program has been a major priority at Kent Park Primary School as we believe that Literacy is an integral part of a student’s education. Understanding how language works will develop confident and informed students, empowered to analyse, communicate, and develop relationships with others and the world around them. It provides a platform for thinking, communicating, and relating to others in real-life situations.

Literacy comprises of Reading, Writing and Speaking and Listening. The classroom teaching program is structured to provide two hours daily of explicit instruction followed by shared examples and opportunities to practise new skills. Our program is differentiated to provide opportunities for all students to achieve, no matter what their learning style or current ability.

At Kent Park Primary School, we aim to provide a rich learning environment in all classes to foster a love of language. The study of literacy provides the opportunity to appreciate, enjoy and use language, and develop a sense of its richness and power to evoke feelings. We aim to encourage the students to recognise that the purpose and audience for writing will influence the structure, features and language applied. Students become skilled in discussing, reading and writing a wide variety of text types with different purposes and structures.

Mathematics

The Mathematics program at Kent Park Primary School is based around explicit teaching, scaffolding, questioning and independent learning. Our teaching philosophy promotes curiosity, questioning and high-level reasoning as integral components of students’ understanding of Maths. We recognise the importance of learners having a positive mindset towards Mathematics and actively foster this love of learning. In the Mathematics’ classroom, we value active, inquisitive minds and encourage critical thinking skills to grow alongside an understanding of mathematical concepts.

Mathematics is taught daily, with a focus on the Victorian Curriculum’s mathematical strands of Number and Algebra, Measurement and Geometry, and Statistics and Probability. To support the teaching and learning of these concepts, we explicitly incorporate the four Proficiencies of Understanding, Fluency, Problem Solving and Reasoning. Arming our students with this wide variety of mathematical perspectives enables them to creatively and confidently solve problems that are essential to everyday life. Concrete materials are used to support learning across the school, promoting a solid foundation of numeracy for all students. Our focus on Number gives our learners the understanding and ability to solve increasingly complex problems and approach challenges with confidence and skill.

Specialist Programs

Visual Arts

Visual Art provides students the opportunity to explore, make and respond to art through interaction with a range of techniques and materials. Lessons are 60 minutes and focus on building age-appropriate skills, while developing creativity and self-expression.

Prep to Grade 2 students learn paper skills like fringing and curling, printing with everyday objects and blending colours. Grade 3 to 6 students learn about the different art movements, painting techniques, sewing skills, aspects of drawing such as perspective. Children learn about the elements of art including line, shape, colour, tone, texture, form, sound, light, time and space.

Performing Arts

Kent Park’s Performing Arts program is an engaging and exciting program which gives all students the opportunity to practise and develop their skills, express themselves and show their creative flair in a safe and exciting environment.

The Performing Arts program incorporates Music, Dance and Drama. Music allows our students to learn different musical approaches which include beat, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, singing and movement. Students use the elements of dance to explore choreography and performance to practice performance and expressive skills. Drama encourages students to think, move, speak and act with confidence. Through role-play and dramatic actions, students explore, imagine and take risks to communicate ideas, experiences and stories.

Students are provided with many opportunities to perform for their peers, through class activities, Assemblies and at school events. A school performance to the community showcases these skills every two years.

Physical Education

Students in Prep to Grade 6 have a weekly 60-minute Physical Education lesson with a qualified PE teacher. With a focus on health, fitness and fun, we encourage students to develop their confidence and skills in a supportive environment. Students are always encouraged to do their best no matter what the outcome is. Being a winner is not always about being first; it is about trying your best and giving it a go. The aim of the Physical Education Program is to equip students with experiences and supporting students to develop competence in making decisions and taking action to promote an active, healthy lifestyle. The acquisition of fine and gross motor skills is essential and related to performance in other curriculum areas.

Our Preps participate in a Perceptual Motor Program (PMP) each week, which is a movement-based program that helps younger students improve their eye/hand and eye/foot coordination, fitness, balance and eye-tracking skills. This program complements classroom learning with a literacy and numeracy focus accommodated in some of the activities. The children also develop fine motor skills to help build hand strength for writing and fine motor control for everyday tasks such as holding a pencil, cutting with scissors, zipping or buttoning a jacket and tying shoelaces.

STEAM

STEAM education is the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths to increase students’ engagement and awareness in these areas. Students are encouraged to work in team environments using communication, collaboration and problem-solving skills while persisting with challenges or projects.

Students followed the STEAM engineering design process – Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Improve and Present while exploring and completing ‘hands-on’ challenges. Students are encouraged to think creatively, take risks and to put what they have learned into practise.  They work collaboratively with partners to follow instructions, co-operate, exchange ideas, test theories, experiment, construct and make modifications.

Students engage in modules such as Day and Night and the Phases of the Moon, Kitchen Chemistry and Growing Crystals. Construction challenges are also explored and include mazes, bridges, kites, liquid fuelled rockets, solar-powered ovens, catapults, tiny houses, 3D healthy meal models, puppet theatres, a sports stadium, an underground dwelling, batteries and electric circuits, a Bottle Flip Challenge, coding and robotics.

Auslan

Australian Sign Language (Auslan) is a language by, and for, Australians who are deaf or hearing impaired. It’s a visual form of communication that uses hand, arm and body movements to convey meaning.

Lessons are weekly for Prep to Grade 6 and are tailored to students’ ability level. Through a variety of engaging games and activities, students learn how to sign greetings, sign about their families, how to describe things in their environment and how to express feelings.

Environment and Sustainability

Environment and Sustainability gives students at Kent Park Primary School the opportunity to learn about the environment, our impact and how to protect it through hands-on projects. The children work together to care for our chickens and plant vegetables in our flourishing garden. Projects have included:

• Collecting food scraps to feed our chickens and make compost for the gardens
• Reducing waste through recycling and reusing initiatives
• Harvesting fruits and vegetables such as cucumbers, tomatoes and kiwi fruit
• Learning about seasons and investigating the best time of the year to harvest various vegetable crops
• Investigating where our waste ends up and practise sorting rubbish responsibly, recycling and composting where possible
• Learning about what plants need to grow and researching the process of photosynthesis.

Camps

At Kent Park Primary School students attend camp from Grade 3 – 6. School camps provide students with the opportunity to create memories, have fun with friends and develop:

• Social skills
• Independence
• Decision making ability
• Increased environmental awareness
• Teamwork skills
• Resilience.

Kent Park students have attended a range of camps that include outdoor adventure activities at Phillip Island Outdoor Resort, Lady Northcote Recreation Camp and exploring Australian history at Sovereign Hill.

International Student Program (ISP)

Kent Park Primary School is accredited to enrol International Students and committed to ensuring that all students receive a high quality education experience through optimal levels of support and care in a safe, welcoming and engaging learning environment.

The registered provider for the ISP is the Department of Education and Training (DET) and the CRICOS number is 00861K.

Further information is available by contacting:

• Kent Park Primary School’s International Student Coordinator – Kieran Denver
• DET International Student Division – https://www.education.vic.gov.au

School Uniform

To view our current Kent Park Primary School Uniform Price List, please download the below document.

Alternatively, please call (03) 9763 8055 for any queries.

Plans & Reports

School Context

Kent Park Primary School is located in the outer-eastern Melbourne suburb of Ferntree Gully.

Facilities include a flexible, modern, 10 classroom main building with art room, music room, library and additional learning spaces.

A large assembly hall, full-sized BER gymnasium, STEAM and robotics room, Environment and Sustainability room, OSHC room, 3 mod-5 portables and main administration building complete the buildings.

The grounds include a separate Prep playground area, 2 sandpits, 3 basketball courts, 3 playgrounds, oval, 2 vegetable gardens, fruit trees and chicken coop in a mature native garden setting. West Gully Kinder, run by the Knox City Council, is located directly next to the school on Dobson St.

Staffing consists of a Principal, 9 classroom teachers, 2 specialist teachers, 6 integration aides, business manager, part-time office manager, social worker and trainee school therapy dog. The Leadership Structure introduced in 2018 consists of 3 School Improvement Team Leaders for Literacy, Numeracy and SWPB and 3 Year Level/PLC Leaders.

Specialist subjects include Physical Education and Auslan with semester rotations for STEAM (Science, Technology, Environment, Art, Engineering), Environment and Sustainability, Visual Art and Performing Arts. Other programs offered include swimming, grade 3-6 camps, Bike Education and school production. Technology was upgraded in 2019 with 36 iPads, 30 laptops, WebEx board added to smart TV’s in every classroom and several desktop computers.

Enrolments have stabilized recently between 210-220 students. Prior to this, enrolments had dropped significantly from 432 in 2016 and 289 in 2018. Prep enrolments for 2021 have doubled since 2020 with many being new families to the school. There has also been an increase in the number of new families moving into the area and enrolling students in upper grades as the long-established families begin selling and new families are moving in.

Prep enrolments are coming from an increasingly wide variety of locations and settings including council run and private kindergartens, early learning and child-minding facilities.

The school community demographics are mid-socio economic, predominantly Australian born, 3 students come from a non-English speaking background, 7 students are funded under the Program for students with a disability, with 3 international students and 1 refugee student enrolled in 2021.

Policies

To view Kent Park Primary School’s 2021 Policies, please see here for the full list.