Analysis

Northern Bay witnessed significant engagement from families across its services and programs in 2024. It had strong playgroup participation in supported playgroup sessions. Parents surveyed at Northern Bay show good levels of confidence with 60% stating that they are extremely or very confident to help their children to learn. Northern Bay’s onsite governance group remains robust with partners agreeing that the governance group has a clear vision, that there is a shared commitment to achieving this vision and that partners have the skills and expertise to address the goals of the partnership.

keyboard_return Looking Back

Moving Forward keyboard_return

  • Parent voice: New, informal approaches to collecting insights from parents is providing a rich data source to inform site planning. In addition, peer-to-peer relationships developed through engagement activities are leading to parents supporting each other during school holidays, when there are fewer support services available on site.
  • Continuity of Learning: Strong relationships exist between the school and the Early Learning Centre. In 2024, the Continuity of Learning working group initiated a numeracy focus across the school, early learning, and playgroups. This initiative will be further developed in 2025 through the sharing of resources and implementation of teaching practices.
  • Home Learning environment: The Site Services Group is developing a shared approach to supporting parents as first educators across all local services.
  • Koorie education: A new approach to support engagement among Koorie students has been trialled, resulting in good attendance by students and families. The initiative is a partnership between the Victorian Government’s Early Help program, Wathaurong, Northern Bay College and Our Place.
  • Toy library and volunteering: Site partners have collaborated to establish a Toy Library onsite. Our Place and Northern Bay College have set up a volunteer program to run the library, which has attracted applications from five community members.
  • Health Services Access: Site partners are committed to working together to attract an onsite paediatrician to better support children and families access critical health screening and support.
  • Home Learning Environment: Following planning by the Site Services Advisory Group, site partners will adopt a shared approach to encouraging parents to strengthen home learning environments each term.
  • Peer Support: Northern Bay has a number of existing groups and channels to enable parent voice and connection, but it has been identified that more opportunities would be valuable for early years parents.
  • Adult volunteering and employment: As the number of parents and carers making daily use of the site has increased, Our Place will work with existing and prospective site partners to increase the number of volunteering, education and employment pathways available to parents.
  • Early Help Family Services: The Early Help Family Services trial has been a game changer for the Northern Bay community, providing consistent early intervention services and playgroups to families on site. Our Place will work with Meli and DFFH to explore how to ensure these services are sustained beyond existing budget commitments.
1,753 playgroup child attendances in 2024* *Playgroup data: Data not available in some instances.
Parental confidence in 2024
How confident do you feel to help your child learn?
60% Extremely/very confident
28% Somewhat confident
13% Not very/not at all confident
Response rate: 40
Parental confidence levels at each site should be interpreted cautiously and with consideration of the survey sample size. The Parent Voice survey responses reflect the views of the parents engaged by Our Place to complete the survey but may not be representative of the wider school community.
Partnership health in 2023: 4.9/6
Average across all Our Place sites in 2023 is 4.9/6
6 5 4 3 2 1 0
 
 
 
Term 4 2021 Term 4 2022 Term 4 2023