During 2023 our educational focus will be to improve Literacy and Numeracy skills — staff, students and families working together so all our students achieve at least 12 months growth. Other goals for the year are:

Build a community that continues to learn - Implement system Literacy and Numeracy initiatives which will increase student assessment data.

Enhance and maintain the wellbeing of all - Continued increase of attendance rates and implementation of school-wide Well Being Policy.

Build a community that is connected - Increased promotion of the school Vision and Mission statements throughout the community and to continue to increase family attendance at school events.

Dear families,

Like all schools in the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, St Francis Xavier has been participating in the Catalyst initiative since 2021. All our teachers have been engaged in Catalyst professional learning with adoption of a common curriculum and classroom approach, with teachers implementing High Impact Teaching Practices across the Archdiocese. Some of you may have come across articles in the national and international media about the success of this initiative. This has resulted in an increase in student participation in class, adoption of explicit instruction with programs such as Spelling Mastery, Initialit and the Connecting Maths Concepts, and OzEScience, all successfully implemented at St Francis Xavier, with the support from Canberra Goulburn CE and Good to Great Schools Australia.

We are seeing improvement in student performance at St Francis Xavier and across the Canberra Goulburn Archdiocese.

Last week I was in Canberra for the Catholic Leaders Day with all Principals from our System. One of the presentations on the day was from Tim McDonald on "What is a Behaviour Curriculum? Tim spoke about the need to form habits around behaviour for our students to enable them to achieve their potential in learning and reduce low engagement and unproductiveness in lessons. This will be a focus for St Francis Xavier School in 2024.

This week we celebrate All Saints and All Souls Day, two important days in our Catholic Tradition.  All Saints Day celebrate all saints who are in heaven. These include all known and unknown saints. We believe that the world is spiritually connected to heaven.

Saints are role models for us. We look to them as examples for ways to live like Jesus. There are many saints in heaven with God but there are also saints living among us. These are people who, by the grace of God, try to live out the Gospel everyday. Imitating their actions of love and compassion help make our world a better place and bring us closer to God. We need saints living among us who have a commitment to helping the poor and working for justice in our world. We are all saints in the making. This means that God has an important mission for every one of us.

Holy Mary, pray for us

St Mary of the Cross MacKillop, pray for us

St Francis Xavier, pray for us

St Jospeh, pray for us

Many thanks to the students and families who joined with Fr Paul for an early celebration of All Saints Day.  The students participated with reverence and respect!  We thank Fr Paul for extending the invitation to our community.