From the Assistant Principal
Child Safeguarding Commitment
The safeguarding of our students is a key priority of St Matthew’s.
Safeguarding is a term used to describe the protection of the human rights of vulnerable people. This may be due to their age, culture or trauma background, or they may be at risk of abuse, neglect or exploitation. Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility. Anyone who comes into contact with children and their families has a role to play.
Here is our Child Safeguarding Commitment:
- St Matthew’s Primary School is committed to child safety.
- We support and respect all children, as well as our staff and volunteers.
- St Matthew’s is committed to our children being safe, happy and empowered participants of our community.
- We have zero tolerance of child abuse, and all allegations and safety concerns will be treated very seriously and consistently in accordance with our robust policies and procedures.
- St Matthew’s is committed to preventing child abuse and identifying risks early, and removing and reducing these risks.
- We have legal and moral obligations to contact authorities when we are worried about a child’s safety.
- St Matthew’s has robust recruitment practices to reduce the risk of child abuse by new and existing School Community Council members, school staff and volunteers.
- We are committed to regularly training and educating our School Community Council members, staff and volunteers on child abuse risks.
- St Matthew’s is committed to the cultural safety of Aboriginal children, the cultural safety of children from culturally and/or linguistically diverse backgrounds, and to providing a safe environment for children with a disability.
- We have specific policies and procedures in place that support our School Community Council members, staff and volunteers to achieve these commitments.
Protective Behaviours
This year, students will be learning about Protective Behaviours. Protective Behaviours is a way of looking at personal safety to develop life skills to recognise safe and unsafe situations. They are the things we say and do to keep ourselves safe. The two key themes we teach our students are:
Everyone has the right to feel safe all the time.
We can talk with someone we trust about anything.
Everyone has the right to feel safe from all types of abuse, including bullying and violence, both in person and online. We encourage our students to develop and identify a network of safe and trusted ‘go to’ people. These are the people our children can go to if they have a problem. Asking for help from this network is about taking steps to ensure our children are listened to and someone can take action to keep them safer.
For more information, you might like to read this document, published by the ACT Government, Protecting Your Kids: Personal Safety Education for Parents
If you would like to know more about Child Safeguarding, please email me (petra.cole@cg.catholic.edu.au).
NAPLAN TESTING
NAPLAN testing will occur in our school between 12 and 24 March 2025 for students in Years 3 and 5.
Online NAPLAN tests provide more precise results and are engaging for students. The tests are tailored (or adaptive), which means that each test presents questions that may be more or less difficult depending on a student’s responses. This helps students remain engaged with the assessment. Tailored testing allows a wider range of student abilities to be assessed and measures student achievement more precisely. A student’s overall NAPLAN result is based on both the number and complexity of questions they answer correctly. Your child should not be concerned if they find questions challenging; they may be taking a more complex test pathway. All Year 3 students will complete the writing assessment on paper.
NAPLAN provides valuable information to schools and parents about literacy and numeracy achievement. It supports school improvement processes by enabling teachers to monitor student progress over time and to identify areas of strength and development. All eligible students are encouraged and supported to participate in NAPLAN testing. Visit www.nap.edu.au to see interactive versions of the test and for more information.
If you have any questions about your child’s participation in NAPLAN, please contact me.
Petra Cole