Counting Down To End Of Term 3

It's been a "happening" week.

Thu:

Our friends dropped off their pet kelpie (I think) Emma enroute to Uluru for their 3-week family holiday. Their daughter has been Beth's classmate since Prep, and our families have worked out a dog-swapping arrangement that has worked out very well each time one family has to go away.

On the topic of holidays...

One of the things we notice here is the number of families who pull their kids out of school during termtime to go on family vacations. We've heard of families take off to the snow in Aug, to the States, to Egypt...

We did it ourselves in June, when Beth "pontang" 3 days of school so we could take advantage of the mid-week discounts on airfares to the Gold Coast.

According to a Sunday Age article on this trend, there is a clause in the Education Act that penalizes parents for keeping their kids home for no good reason. And going on vacation is apparently not a good enough reason. But I don't expect the Dept to come down hard on families anytime soon. What would be the benefit?

Saturday:

I sat in on the Chinese School's AGM. Including the teachers, there were fewer than 10 present.

What was interesting for me as a parent with a child in the school was:

• New textbooks will be used in 2010 - and they are issued free by the Dept of Education (if I didn't mishear). Because of that, school fees will be capped at the current level. I had a quick look at the materials and they actually look quite interesting. Don't know if Beth will agree though. I think she'll miss having the English text alongside cos the new books are all in Chinese and hanyu pinyin!
  
• The school hopes to expand its enrolment
• The principal has been re-elected for another 2-year term. From what I could observe, the teachers support her 100% in what she has been doing. I must certainly say she displays an impressive commitment, integrity and responsibility as P. From her own verbal report, the comments of the VP as well as the written Principal's Report, I think the P - more than any other individual - has raised the school's profile and visibility within the local community. I know there are some (myself included) who shudder at the way she speaks English and even at her occasionally inaccurate Chinese pronunciation. She knows it too (the English bit anyway). Until a more linguistically able and equally responsible individual comes forward, I think we should just work with what we've got and be thankful.
  

Sunday:

We spent the day in Brighton because Beth was participating in the annual Yamaha Music Concert. This year's event was held at Brighton Grammar.