Wednesday, 19 March 2025

 Matt FREGON (Ashwood) (09:52): It has been a busy start to the 2025 school year across the Ashwood district, and I have had the pleasure of visiting the wonderful young people at Pinewood Primary, Syndal South Primary and Mount Waverley North Primary, handing out our all-important prep bags. Not only will all of our littlest learners continue to get the benefits of these prep bags and that bundle, but their reading education will now also be improved by the rollout of our fantastic, statewide phonics program – and a shout-out to the Minister for Education on that one.

I was also able to drop in to some of those schools to present leadership badges to our wonderful grade ‍6s and SRC leaders. A big shout-out goes to all the captains, vice-captains and school leaders who I met at Essex Heights Primary, Pinewood, Syndal South again and Solway Primary. I also give a very special thankyou and an ‘I think I got away with that one’ to the Holy Family School senior students for their friendly grilling, which I got at the Q and A session last month – what we earn is a topic of concern, apparently.

I also had the honour of attending Salesian College for their high-achievers assembly, where students were recognised for their incredible achievements in 2024. I was very proud to present the Norm Gibbs award to Christos Giakoumatos, recognising his outstanding leadership contributions to our community.

Finally – and I am going to run out of time – I was joined by member for Southern Metro John Berger from the other place when we met the enthusiastic grade 5 students from Ashburton Primary. I will have more to say about them next time.