Principal honoured for excellence

Parmelia has a decorated leader in its midst who recently received an award for her commitment to student learning.

St Vincent Primary School’s principal Karmela Messineo was awarded a Certificate of Excellence in Educational Leadership by the Australian Council for Educational Leaders last Tuesday.

“I believe that education is about constantly learning, we live in an ever-changing world and our teachers need to be up with it,” she said.

Ms Messineo who began as principal of St Vincent's at the start of this year received the award for her leadership of turnaround school St Joseph's Primary School in Waroona.

“It was a big surprise, quite a number of people received awards on the night so I’m very privileged and very humbled that I was one of the recipients,” she said.

“My award was mostly based on community building, I worked closely with students, staff and parents to lift academic standards and to address a number of issues within the school and now it has become quite successful.”

Ms Messineo, who has more than 25 years of experience in education, was nominated for the award by a member of the Catholic Education office.

Now as St Vincent’s principal she hopes to encourage the staff to look at ways to improve teaching practices and always be learning.

“The strength of this school is that it’s very community based — everyone looks after each other, which I love,” Ms Messineo said.

“Our focus is numeracy this year but we are also looking at lots of different things and tying them in to delivering the curriculum.

“I was very fortunate to get the appointment. I’m very humbled to be here, it’s an amazing place.”