Welcome to the second Newsletter for the term. It is hard to believe that we are almost at the end of Week 6 of the term, it is certainly flying by. Just a reminder that this term is a nine week term as we break for holidays at Easter. The last day of term is Thursday 1^st April. 

BPS 100 Year Centenary

2021 is a big year for Byford PS, as we celebrate turning 100 years. A planning committee was formed late last year and planning is underway for a celebration event to be held on Saturday 23 October. Keep your eyes out in the Newsletter, Facebook group, advertising in the community and letters home for more information about the event, and all are welcome to come along to the planning meetings if you would like to be involved.

P & C

Our supportive and hard-working P & C are looking for new members in 2021. The P & C play a vital role in the school through running the Canteen and Uniform shop, in addition to the many fundraisers they organise and run through the year, providing essential resources back into the school. Without a functioning committee it will be difficult to continue to run the Canteen and Uniform shop. If you are interested in joining the P & C this year please come along to our next meeting on Wednesday 17^th March at 6:30pm in the school staff room. Many hands make light work!

BSSA

Good luck too many of our Year 5/6 students who will be attending the BSSA carnival this Friday. We have teams entering for Cricket, T-Ball and Basketball. Thank you to all the students and staff for the time given towards training this term. We hope the students have fun and we know they will display the Byford Way at all times while they are competing. Special thanks to Miss Marchetti for co-ordinating the event.

Attendance & Absence Follow Up

I would like to thank our entire school community for the great start to the year we have had with regard to attendance. Our current whole school attendance rate is 93.4%, with each year level reaching 93% or above. This is a great outcome, as the recommended attendance rate by the department of education is 92% or above. You may have also noticed that if your child is absent from school and we do not have a reason provided that you will receive a text message from the school at approximately 10am. You can simply reply to this message to provide a reason that we can use to update the system. We appreciate your support with this so that we can reduce our rate of unexplained absences. Remember when it comes to learning, every day counts!

Online Third Party Services Survey

Thank you for the excellent response we have had to the Online Third Party Services Survey that was emailed out to all families a couple of weeks ago. If you did not receive the explanation note sent home, or the email with the link to the survey, can you please contact the school so that this can be completed. There are also paper copies available at the front office. We are currently collating all of the data and will be in touch for any missing surveys over the coming weeks. Thank you for your assistance with this important matter.

Jody Harrington