DEPUTY PRINCIPAL'S REPORT

Social Behaviour

At St Mary MacKillop we use intranet software called SIMON. Most parents will be very familiar with this name and in fact you will most likely have seen it recently during our periods of remote learning. We use SIMON to communicate with students, to organise our day through the timetable, to record attendance and results. We also use it to record behaviour.  Previously this has been referred to as ‘Behaviour Tracking’ however it has a new name - Social Behaviour. 

In a nutshell, Social Behaviour is a way of recording behaviour and then encouraging positive behaviour outcomes through restorative conversations and support. The support might be a consequence for inappropriate behaviour or strategies for improvement. In most cases students will be well aware that there has been something recorded, as they will have had a conversation with a staff member about it. We believe that it is also important that parents have a conversation with their child about the Social Behaviour that has been recorded and to facilitate this, our Social Behaviour is now linked through PAM.

As of Monday 9th August, parents will be able to see a graph indicating the number of Incidents, Detentions or Suspensions. We are making this available to parents for the sake of transparency, but also to include parents in the conversations about what is happening in the learning environment. Given that we are halfway through the year parents might log into PAM and see that their child has a number of incidents. This is not necessarily a reason to be alarmed but it might initiate a discussion at home and perhaps even at school. Students should be aware that something has been recorded and be able to discuss that with their parents, however please be aware that there are a number of reasons for recording behaviour, ranging from late to class to more serious incidents.

Should you as parents have questions or concerns about the Social Behaviour graph on your child’s PAM profile, please contact your child’s Homeroom Teacher to discuss. Please also be aware that we are also working towards initiating Student Commendations through the same PAM links as another way of engaging parents in their child’s learning.