Templestowe Park Primary School

"they taught me how to write this review so I cant really say bad things about it haha"

"Excellent school with a strong focus towards their values. They are also very welcoming to minorities and diverse racial groups. We have so many friends whose kids go to this school and they all talk about the small school in it’s caring and diverse nature, the key focus of the teachers towards care, education and balance growth for all children."

"Excellent staff, experienced management, fantastic teachers and amazing facilities, what else we could wish for. Thank you."

"Templestowe Park Primary School (TPPS) is an absolutely excellent state school. They maintain a ‘zero tolerance’ bullying policy, and all the kids that I see there when I pick up my young son (during normal/non-remote-learning/COVID periods of course!) routinely appear happy and content, and they interact positively with each other. It’s a genuinely harmonious environment that I’m glad my son is part of. The kids in the upper grades tend to exhibit maturity that is somewhat beyond their years, and I believe that this is at least partly due to TPPS’s somewhat innovative practice of assigning kids in the upper grades specific responsibilities, some of which pertain to nurturing/supervising the younger kids at the school. The curriculum contains a good balance of academic and artistic/creative classes, and I believe that there is now also a general policy that the students engage in some form of physical activity a minimum of 5 times a week (i.e. once per day on average). The school’s head physical education teacher has a good rapport with the kids, and it is clear from their interactions with him that they respect him. My son Z is currently (in 2020) in year 1, and as well as the physical education teacher, I have also been very impressed with three other teachers/staff at TPPS thus far; his prep teacher Ms C-P, his grade 1 teacher Ms Y, and the school principal Mr Roberts. Ms C-P did an absolutely perfect job of introducing Zain to the general ways of primary school, and he rapidly became quite ‘besotted’ with her. Ms C-P also recognised early on that Z required some work that was more challenging than the norm, and during the second semester (after Z had ‘settled in’/formed a friendship-base/etc.) she set about instigating that. Ms Y ‘took up the baton’ in this regard in earnest the next semester (the first of grade 1), and from the outset Ms Y has gone to great lengths to ensure that Z is provided with sufficiently challenging work. This level of personalised attention to ensuring that Z has been adequately challenged by his classwork has been extremely impressive, and much appreciated. Lastly, I have found the principle Mr Roberts to be an extremely effective and charismatic leader. As with the school’s head physical education teacher, it is quite clear that the kids not only respect but actually like Mr Roberts, which is certainly not the case for all primary school principles. One of his best qualities is the lengths that he goes to to always be accessible to parents, in person. Mr Roberts makes a seemingly almost daily habit of attending/‘mingling’ at the main point of drop-off or pickup in either the morning or the afternoon, and sometimes both. During these times he always seems to be totally receptive to any parent/carer who wants to have a quick (completely unscheduled) chat about any issue. I first noticed this when Z started prep, and I assumed that it was something that Mr Roberts did on the first few days of every year, in an effort to ‘meet the parents’. To my surprise, it turned out to be something he routinely does, throughout the entire year. This level of regular accessibility is genuinely highly commendable, given that as the boss of the entire place he no doubt has a ‘heavy schedule’/lengthy list of other tasks he is required to undertake every day. Based on my experiences with TPPS to date, I suggest that if you enrol your child at the school it is highly likely that they will have a very positive 7-year experience, and that as a parent you will be impressed with how the school operates."