Blair Dravitski

So the fact that parents are on site, it's up to my staff to bridge that gap and go the last 10% and say hello or identify whose parent they are in regards to the child that they're there to pick up.

It's all about just taking those opportunities and making those moments special for the parents that are there and the kids get a kick out of it as well.

They love the fact that they're getting emails home and I think for my staff in particular just recently, they've had some really lovely replies to those emails which therefore kind of I guess closes the loop in regards to actually there is a purpose to doing this because the parents are acknowledging them.

Yeah, absolutely.

So sort of, I think on average, we're about three emails a week across the class.

And it's just, I guess, just noticing those things that kids are doing well in the space.

It might be a friendship interaction.

It might be an academic interaction.

It might be something that they talked about at a conference that's now improved.

So they're being shared with parents on a regular basis.

And it just creates a culture of community and a culture of conversation that's, I guess, you know, creates that excitement and pride amongst the families that we have.

I'd like to think that, you know, around the dinner table, there's acknowledgement, whether parents have got little things set up to say, hey, look, and I like that concept of being at home and it being a positive experience because the child's put in some effort and it's been recognised.

Yeah, so we make sure it's part of our team meetings.

So they create time within the team meetings that they have.

It takes 10 minutes to send three emails.

They don't have to be screeds and paragraphs long.

It's just about taking those times to notice the successes that kids are having at school.

And when it comes to, I guess, the other side of the coin, when we're connecting because something's happened, and look, I think every school at different stages have things that take place during the school day, those relationships are already established, those email chains are already there, and the parents are much more willing to come in and have a conversation or at least let the school process and deal with the situation at hand.

Yeah, so our school was built nine years ago, and I arrived six years ago with a roll of just shy of 300 kids.

We've now got 1,150 kids heading towards 1,200 at the end of the year.