About Hendon Primary

The Hendon School community is committed to providing quality teaching and learning by working together to create a culture of ongoing improvement.

All of our students experience success in a broad, balanced, relevant and challenging curriculum that promotes lifelong learning.

Our values are caring, equity, creativity, integrity, and quality. Our major priorities are literacy, numeracy, science and ICT. Classroom teachers and their students are supported by classroom School Service Officers, Aboriginal Education Worker, and teachers in Special Education, Aboriginal Education, Resources Based Learning and the school counsellor, who all work in classes daily.

Highlights for 2012

2012 was punctuated by a number of significant events not the least of which was significant changes to the leadership team.
Bronwyn Hudson retired from the position of Deputy at the end of 2011 and was replaced by Mike Sankey.
Then at the end of term 2 Tony Osborne, principal at Hendon for 12 years, accepted a position as Assistant Regional Director, Western and Eyre Region. The community was sad to see both these people move on and we thank them for their significant contributions.

As Hendon is widely regarded as a high performing school we saw visits by a number of political figures including Peter Garret and Grace Portolesi during the launch of the Empowering Local Schools.

The school received a grant of $50000 to support the significant work of parent engagement and will enable the continuation of this programme into 2013.

The school was also awarded a NAB Schools First Award for the project, supported by the Smith Family, working with students and families to develop Literacy and Numeracy skills.

The school continues to have individual and group successes in a range of curricula and extracurricular activities. The upper primary boys winning the Shark Baseball cup, Room 4 students winning the year level award for their Mathematics project ‘Is Maths In Fashion' and individual successes in Chess tournaments just to name a few.

Our Arts programme again provided excellent performances by our choirs and bands at Festival Theatre and local Shopping Centres.
Our school was awarded a cash prize for their ongoing significant participation in the Premiers PE challenge.

Our students continue to enjoy a diverse and interesting programme and have incorporated a number of outside agencies to promote life skills and wider than school learning. The sleep programme run for year 67 students was extremely successful.

Our involvement with Charles Sturt Council allowed for programmes such as Community Foodies and Think Feet First both programmes which promote health education.

The list goes on, but all these and many more programmes mean our students enjoy a diverse meaningful education which enables them to become the active members of the community of the future.

~ Mike Sankey

Highlights for 2011

The highlights for 2011 are numerous. Below is just a selection of the significant positive events that took place at Hendon Primary this year:

The leadership team continued to lead us through the school improvement process. Maritsa Mountzouris and Dave Crossley (Literacy) Jacqueline Anderson (Numeracy) Ilia Tsoutouras (History) and Kimi Johns (Science) Maggie Gibson (SHIP), Paul Tassell (IT Management) and Maria Stone (The Arts) combined with Bronwyn Hudson (Deputy), Jan Marquis and Chris Elliott (Counsellor) and Tony Osborne (Principal) to form the School Planning Committee that over saw a year of exciting innovation and change.

Our highly successful Intervention Program managed by Angela Baumeister (Special Education) Julia Wallis (English as a Second Language and Aboriginal Education Teacher) and Peter Clark (Aboriginal Community Education Officer) and ably supported by our talented classroom SSOs continued to ensure our students who are struggling received the extra help needed.

Our CPC (now known as the Hendon Preschool) continued to provide an exceptional preschool learning program and saw their numbers exceed 60 for the first time in many years.

Our Out of School Hours Care and a Vacation Care program continued to grow in numbers and reputation. Natasha Lloyd and her staff have done an outstanding job in establishing the program from scratch, gaining full accreditation and providing care programs of the highest quality.

Our weekly morning assemblies that showcase the brilliant learning occurring in our classrooms, continue to impress all members of their audience, including the students’ families and friends.

The Serbian Mother Tongue Program and the Japanese Program continue to effectively expose our students to other languages and cultures.

Our Resource Based Learning and Information Literacy Programs operating out of the Resource Centre continued to enhance the students learning in these critically important areas.

Combined Schools Choir, West Lakes performances etc give our students untold opportunities to perform and develop their performance skills. The quality of the performances was a reflection of the work that goes into the weekly practices for each of our three choirs. Having over half of our students involved in the choirs, given that they are optional programs, reflects the positive attitude our students have towards the performing arts.

The opportunities to learn a musical instrument as a result of having the Music Hub teachers here every week and the quality of their end of year performance was a highlight.

246 of our students entered into the Premier’s Reading Challenge with certificates, gold, silver and bronze medals being awarded across the school. We also have many students who have reached champion, legend or hall of fame status.

Once again this year our students’ efforts were recognised with a $1000 prize for their involvement in the Premiers Be Active Challenge.

Our Sports Day, ably coordinated by Snezana Petrov, was another highlight of the year.

Sports involvement continued to be popular and successful. The parents who coach the out of hours school teams are extraordinary – they contribute hours of their own time and energy for the students, in cricket, football, basketball, soccer and netball. Our students also successfully participated in the Interschool Athletics and Swimming Carnivals.

The “Breakfast Program” is addressing a real need for many of our students. The staff and volunteers do a wonderful job each morning from 8:00am

Science Week and the Science program in general have provided exceptional learning opportunities for our students.

The new Kaurna Garden, situated next to Room 14 began to take shape in 2011. It is envisioned that the new feature will become a Learning Hub for classes.

~ Tony Osborne, Principal

Highlights of 2010

The highlights for 2010 are numerous. Below is just a selection of the significant positive events that took place at Hendon Primary this year:

The Building Education Revolution funding has resulted in an impressive new 8 classroom block which includes a learning street. This funding also enabled us to install extra verandahs and exit doors to our specialist Science, Japanese and Activity rooms.

The leadership team continued to lead us through the school improvement process. Brenda Allen (Literacy) Brenda Messner and Lil Weston (Numeracy) Ilia Tsoutouras and Paul Tassell (ICT) and Kimi Johns (Science) Maggie Gibson (SHIP) and Maria Stone (The Arts) combined with Bronwyn Hudson (Deputy), Jan Marquis and Chris Elliott (Counsellor) and Tony Osborne (Principal) to form the School Development Committee that over saw a year of exciting innovation and change.

Our CPC continued to provide an exceptional preschool learning program and saw their numbers exceed 60 for the first time in many years.

Our school started up an Out of School Hours Care and a Vacation Care program part way through the year. Natasha Lloyd and her staff have done an outstanding job in establishing the program from scratch, gaining full accreditation and providing care programs of the highest quality.

Our weekly morning assemblies that showcase the brilliant learning occurring in our classrooms continue to impress all members of their audience including the students family and friends

The Serbian Mother Tongue Program and the Japanese Program continue to effectively expose our students to other languages and cultures.

Our Resource Based Learning and Information Literacy Programs operating out of the Resource Centre continued to enhance the students learning in these critically important areas.

Combined Schools Choir, West Lakes performances etc give our students untold opportunities to perform and develop their performance skills in so many ways. The quality of the performances was a reflection of the work that goes into the weekly practices for each of our three choirs. Having over half of our students involved in the choirs given that they are optional programs, reflects the positive attitude our students have towards the performing arts.

The opportunities to learn a musical instrument as a result of having the Music Hub teachers here every week and the quality of their end of year performance was a highlight.

266 of our students entered into the Premier’s Reading Challenge with certificates, gold, silver and bronze medals being awarded across the school. We also have many students who have reached champion, legend or hall of fame status.

Once again this year our students' efforts were recognised with a $1000 prize for their involvement in the Premiers Be Active Challenge.

Our Sports Day, ably coordinated by Snezana Petrov was another highlight of the year. Sports involvement continued to be popular and successful.

The parents who coach the out of hours school teams are extraordinary - they contribute hours of their own time and energy for the students, in cricket, football, soccer and netball. Our students also successfully participated in the Interschool Athletics and swimming Carnivals.

The "Breakfast Program" is addressing a real need for many of our students. The staff and volunteers do a wonderful job each morning from 8:00am