We have had a calm and positive feeling across the school with our predicted 30 classes implemented in draft as we await our staffing resources following the student enrolment data collection by the Department of Education on Day 8 (Thursday 6 February). Following this, our class structures will be confirmed for 2025. We currently have 710 students enrolled for the 2025 school year.

Our staff have returned to school with enthusiasm and energy to support Sunshiner students with a fantastic year of learning. A special welcome to new members to the Sunshine Beach State School staff team:

• Danielle Gillespie - Year 6 Teacher
• Summer Borghuis - Year 4 Teacher
• Norman Schaschke – ICT Technician

There are a number of staff who will be rejoining the Sunshine Beach team in 2025. We welcome back Clair Allan, Kaitlyn Sperring, Greta Matters, Mandy Wyatt, Bonnie Law and Erin Counsell.

I am incredibly honoured to be joining a wonderful team of talented and committed staff. The work of Sunshine Beach State School staff in 2024, with the support of parents and community, enabled the school to achieve high academic outcomes across the board. These results situate our school as a high performing school, exceeding regional, state and national average outcomes in all academic areas. The success of your child’s education is a team effort, and it is evident that the Sunshine Beach families are well and truly on the Sunshine Beach team.

2024 outcomes 

In 2024, Sunshine Beach State School proudly surpassed all mean scale achievement scores in NAPLAN. We can celebrate 94% of our students achieving A-C for English and 66% achieving A-B levels in the English curriculum. Similarly, our school’s outcomes for Mathematics were strong with 95% A-C and 76% A-B levels of achievement. I share this data with you as we are extremely proud of the achievements and work of our learners and staff.

Of course, schooling is much more than academic outcomes, please be assured your child’s wellbeing, engagement and sense of belonging in our school community is a priority to our staff.

Our school’s 2024 Semester 2 reporting data demonstrated 91% of our students receive A-B effort ratings and 98% of our students achieve an A-C effort rating. Similarly positive, respectful and connecting behaviours are evident across all our school contexts with 86% of our students receiving A-B outcomes for positive behaviour and 98.5% of our students receiving an A-C outcome for respectful behaviour choices demonstrated with consistency. Well done, Sunshiner students – thank you for your outstanding commitment and contributions to a supportive, encouraging and happy school day, every day, for everyone!

2025 Improvement Priorities 

Our improvement priorities are focused on Learning, Engagement and Wellbeing.

Learning: Implementation of Version 9 English and Mathematics, through the use of high impact teaching strategies and strong moderation processes.
Engagement: Strengthening inclusive teaching and learning practices and embedding individual student case management.
Wellbeing: Enhancing our sense of community and ensuring positive relationships with students, staff and families to provide a need fulfilling and joyful school.

Our improvements targets are:

• 96% Level of Achievement A-C for English and Maths
• 68% Level of Achievement A-B for English
• 78% Level of Achievement A-B for Mathematics
• Outperform National Average for percentage of students in the ‘Exceeding’ year level expectations band by 2% in all NAPLAN subtests
• 93% student attendance rate
• School Opinion Survey – This school has a strong sense of community 95%

QParents

To ensure your child has access to our online programs (Mathletics, Maths Seeds, Reading Eggs) and can gain your consent to participate in excursions, incursions and other school consent required activities, please prioritise your registration with QParents.

QParents is the Queensland Department of Education application for digital permissions. All families have been sent invitations to join QParents. Initial set up needs to be done on a computer and then QParents is accessible via an app on your phone. QParents is very easy to use and allows parents to provide digital permission for our school events and online programs. This registration with QParents will automatically transfer to secondary school with your child.

QParents also allows parents to view absences and provide absence information. To ensure your child can access our online programs. Pop into the office or sent us an email if you are having any difficulties in setting this up. We are here to help! Not only is QParents easy for parents to use, it saves the drama of the lost note, as well as saving paper wastage as we implement this paper-less system of digital permission.

Parents and Citizens’ Association (P&C)

A big thank you to the 2024 P&C team who provided resourcing of $150,000 to establish new playground equipment in the lower school playground. Our lower school students are thrilled to be using this play equipment every day. This is a wonderful example of P&C leadership and community support to enhance facilities for our Sunshine Beach students. Don’t forget – every time you order through our school tuckshop, you are supporting the P&C fundraising efforts.

Each year, we build our community connection by implementing a school-wide communication system that is tied in with a P&C Parent Class Representative for each of our classrooms. The P&C Parent Class Representative is an important role to enhance communication, build community connection and support our P&C’s initiatives. We are very appreciative of any parents who are keen to nominate for this role. An email was sent home on Monday 3 February with the details to nominate, as well as the link for all parents to give their permission to be included in the P&C Parent Class Rep’s communication.

Our first P&C meeting for 2025 will be held on Wednesday 19 February 2025 at 5.30pm. All parents are invited and encouraged to come along and share your thoughts on our key focus areas for this year.

Interactive Digital Screens 

Our students are able to engage in a wide range of learning experiences supported by access to digital technology. Over the school holidays, over $80,000 was invested in new Interactive Digital Screens across our classrooms. Our teachers and students are exploring new functionalities to enhance engagement and deepening of knowledge through use of these tools.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you need any assistance to ensure your child has the most successful experience at Sunshine Beach State School – lcutt1@eq.edu.au