Principal’s News - Week 3 Term 1 2026
Welcome back to our new school year and I hope you had a lovely summer break. We would like to invite all families to join us at the Port Kennedy Playground on Jacquard Way on Friday 20 February from 3.30pm – 6pm where Community Spirit will host a pizza night to welcome our new families. Come along and enjoy getting to know your children’s friends and families.
Now for all our updates! We were delighted to have the new side fence at the Rockingham site installed during the holidays. This now allows access to our West Coast Montessori Early Learning Penguins room from the neighbouring public open space during the school term breaks. The Rockingham site also had tree lopping, grass restoration, paving behind the rear classroom block, decks resealed, and all floors/carpets in the classrooms deep cleaned. At our Port Kennedy sites, our grass has also been given a good treatment regime to ensure maximum growth through the year. All Port Kennedy (AP & PS) floors have been polished and carpets dry-cleaned, and all classes were beautifully set up ready for the new year.
We warmly welcome Caroline Feld to the school in her new role as Enrolments Officer and PK Receptionist. At the PK Primary School site, we now have Venus taking the Program Coordinator role whilst Mary Kruger joins us as the permanent Janda teacher. At Rockingham, we are delighted to have Lizeth and Renea back from their maternity leave to resume their job share roles in the Starfish and Dolphin classes. In the Adolescent Program (AP) we welcome back Julie Grobbelaar to share the Manyin advisory with Michael, allowing Selia to take the Koobalong advisory whilst Gurmayll is on leave in Term 1. With our expanded Senior School numbers, we have now split the Djildjit and Kwila advisory and welcome Leo Keith back as the Kwila advisor. Even with our continued growth, it is wonderful to have so little change take place across our entire staff as this gives such stability for all the students and consistency to the programs offered.
A huge congratulations to Michael Watson as he completed his Association Montessori International (AMI) 12-18 Diploma in Sydney over January. Such an amazing effort and commitment from you to give up two full summers along with completing all the assignments, practicums, and observations that were required over the past 18 months to gain this Diploma. The commitment from yourself, Michelle, and Tony to lead the AP has seen such positive improvements and is a credit to all staff and students working in the high school area. I have also been delighted to see the way the AP students have tackled the task of being phone free this year. What a joy to see lunchtimes full of games in the library, students hanging out on the gym equipment, heaps of conversations in the chill-out space, and larger groups heading to the playground area to engage in sports.
This year our school will be participating in The Engagement Platform (TEP) program. This is an international program developed in the United Kingdom and gathers data on the engagement of students from 8 years of age upwards. The Australian pilot commenced in Term 4 2025 and is 95% funded; however, it was only offered to east coast schools last year. I am excited to be the first Montessori school to access the pilot program. One of the most important aspects of Montessori education is to “Follow the child”. This means building a close relationship with each child to then develop a learning program that meets the child’s needs and interests to create optimum engagement and achieve a higher level of educational attainment. This program will provide concrete data on the engagement of our students, and I believe will create solid evidence of why the Montessori Method is so successful. Families and students who will be involved in the pilot TEP will shortly receive more information and sign-in details.
-Vanessa
Principal