How can we help?

We are a local Government school. Our difference is in HOW we deliver our curriculum. Our difference is based around our 3 Pillars – Bilingual Education, The IB Primary Years Programme and Wellbeing. These 3 Pillars provide a uniqueness that makes Bayswater South not only a local Government school, but an internationally renowned learning centre that draws students and educators from all over Melbourne and the world. 

Check out our Bilingual Education page – but in short, we have a commitment to immersing our students in both the English and German languages at a ratio of 50:50. Traditionally, we were able to deliver specific subjects in each language, where the content and concepts were taught either in English of German, but current research suggests that this is not necessarily how language is learnt, nor how is it how language works in the real world. Our understanding of Translanguaging, mother-tongue and multilingualism is growing and developing, and we are seeing code-switching of languages happening in the school more than ever. This means that our English and German speaking teachers are working together to ensure that not only are all of the necessary life-long skills, concepts, knowledge and understandings being learnt, but that they are all happening simultaneously in a language rich environment.

Head over to our PYP page to find out more. But while you are here: Bayswater South Primary School is proud to be an accredited IB World School offering the Primary Years Programme (PYP). 

At Bayswater South, we align our vision and mission with that of the IB, in which we strive to, ‘develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.’

As a bilingual school, we are in the unique position within Australia to develop students who are multilingual, internationally minded and who are driven to take action in the local and global community.

IB PYP Curriculum encompasses not only the essential knowledge but also the skills and dispositions required to become an effective learner. It is designed for students aged three to twelve and is an inquiry based approach to teaching and learning.

Positive Education is the combination of traditional education principles with the study of happiness and wellbeing, using Martin Seligman‘s PERMA model and the Values in Action (VIA) classification.

Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, has incorporated positive psychology into education models as a way to decrease depression in younger people and enhance their wellbeing and happiness. By using his PERMA model (or its extension, the PERMAH framework) in schools, educators and practitioners aim to promote positive mental health among students and teachers.

The PERMA and PERMAH Frameworks

PERMA encompasses five main elements that Seligman premised as critical for long-term wellbeing:

1. Positive Emotions: Feeling positive emotions such as joy, gratitude, interest, and hope;
2. Engagement: Being fully absorbed in activities that use your skills but still challenge you;
3. (Positive) Relationships: Having positive relationships;
4. Meaning: Belonging to and serving something you believe is bigger than yourself;
5. Accomplishment: Pursuing success, winning achievement, and mastery.

The PERMAH framework adds Health onto this, covering aspects such as sleep, exercise, and diet as part of a robust positive education program (Norrish & Seligman, 2015).

If you live in our Zone you are able to and encouraged to enrol in our school. For anyone who lives outside of our zone, enrolments are open to you, however we ask that you contact your local Zoned school for a tour first. 

If you are interested in enrolling your child in our school, please use the book a tour form on our website.

Our school values are Respect, Empathy, Honesty and Teamwork. But head over to our School Leaders page to hear what they have to say about our Values in action!

This changes from year to year. We have families that have travelled to Melbourne recently and some who have strong links with Germany through ancestry and work. We are a strongly multicultural school with families with backgrounds from over 40 different countries. Head to our Primary Years Programme page to find out more about how we build interculturally aware students.

As we have a commitment to 50:50 immersion through the English and German languages, our students acquire both languages in tandem. Our teachers are not only experts in language development, but body language and non-verbal cues as well. This means modelling, gesturing, calling peers to model, make suggestions, building meta-language sets, scaffolding, interpretations and more. All of this put together means that our students develop their English and German language at incredible speed, no matter their mother-tongue language.

Bayswater South Primary School has an extensive support program – The Boost Programme. This is a support and extension programme designed to ensure all of our students are growing towards their full potential and goals, no matter their starting point. The program offers support and extension in Reading, Writing, Spelling, Speaking and Listening, Mathematics and German as an Additional Language.

Every child is different, with different needs. We take a proactive approach to student wellbeing through our Positive Education Wellbeing program. We empower our students with the resilience and emotional awareness of self and others that will allow them to flourish at school. As always, the teachers and school leaders are here to support your child and family when you are in times of need. We offer a Chaplaincy Program and have developed a partnership with the Master of Counselling University of Melbourne – together offering support for our families through counselling five days a week.

In 2021, we have roughly 40% male staff at BSPS.

Of course! Just link in the “real world”, effective learners’ use the tools they need to explore what they are learning about. Often handwriting is essential to daily tasks in our adult life, so for our students it is no different. We use a hands on approach to the learning of literacy in both English and in German. From letter formation, to pencil grip, to the development of written vocabulary and the conventions of written languages, we provide our students with opportunities to write every day.

We have a student to device ratio of 3:1 iPads in Prep – 2 and 1:1 Windows laptops in 3:6. Just like the question above, we use digital devices when it is the right tool for the job – digital devices are often the tool to help students explore their learning, not the learning itself. Below is an image that can helps teachers, learners and parents know when and how to engage with technology as a tool for learning.

As you may have read above, we take a proactive approach to student wellbeing through our Positive Education approach. Head over to our Positive Education Page to read more about Friendology.

With all of this in place, sometimes behaviour flies in the face of our school values, misunderstandings and friendship fires happen. We always encourage our students to consider the impact their actions and behaviours have on others and take a restorative approach to resolving conflict. While we have a no tolerance commitment to bullying at Bayswater South Primary School, we find that a restorative, rather than a punitive approach, equips all of our students with the emotional awareness of self and others the work through any situation.