Principal's Report

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE VERY WORRYING

– insights from our students as they provide an insight into what is worrying them.

The College engaged Resilient Youth Australia during the Step Up and Orientation programs at the end of 2018 to conduct the Resilient Youth Survey with our new and incoming Year 11 students and our Year 11 students of 2018 who were moving into Year 12 as the Class of 2019. The results and analysis of the survey are now in. Staff have had the opportunity to review and discuss the results during a staff meeting this week. We will be offering families the opportunity to receive a copy of the data and to attend an evening workshop so as to understand what the data is telling us as a community about our young people.

Until then though, the following is an overview of the results. The results taken from the students’ responses to over 100 questions provide a statistically valid and scientifically proven set of insights for families, schools and communities. RYA is recognised throughout Australia as the leading organisation with the best survey tool to gain insights and understandings on young peoples’ views, opinions, outlook and mental health.

With the largest data set of previous results from every municipal council in the country, the RYA survey results we receive provides the College with a score for our students (male and female) in Years 11 and 12 for 2019 with a comparison to an Australian Norm (score) that is the norm for all other young people of the same age across the rest of the country. The comparative norm cohort ranges from 250,000 to much larger numbers in some age / year level brackets.

EMPOWERMENT

The CRC female students reported that they felt 6% more empowered than the rest of the Australian cohort of the same age. These same female students do not feel as safe at school, in their community or neighbourhood though. In fact, they are reporting that they feel more unsafe compared to the rest of the Australian females.
The CRC males students reported that they do not feel valued / appreciated scoring 2% lower than the Australian norm. The male students did however rate the same as the rest of their peers when they reported that they do in fact feel safe at school, at home and around their neighbourhood.

APPROPRIATE USE OF TECHNOLOGY, BULLYING AND SAFETY

90% of female and 84% of male students admitted to inappropriate use of their phones to text or communicate with others after 10am and right through the night until 6am. When pressed about this many admitted that they were being woken throughout the night by their phones and could be texting with others all night on occasions without their family knowing.
25% of all students had experienced some form of bullying online, 40% had received hurtful comments from others and 50% of male and female students admitted to responding in anger to others in their interactions, taking the form of arguments and threats or other forms of aggressive, sometimes threatening language.

SENSE OF BELONGING

Our students feel more connected to and a sense of belonging to their family, with parents that help them succeed and with whom they can and want to talk to. In fact, compared to the Australian norm, CRC students scored 5-10% higher in the family belonging measure compared to the rest of their peers around the country.
Students rated the teachers at the school 10% above that of their peers for their teachers when asked if their teachers urged them to achieve.
Neither male nor female students were able to report that they feel they belong in their respective communities with 60% of our female students (40% of male students) stating they did not feel connected to their local community and did not feel they had a sense of belonging. Further, around 45% of female and 40% of male students felt they struggled to build and maintain friendships.

ADULTS IN THEIR LIVES

Male and female students were around 10 % clearer than their Australian peers on the rules and expectations set for them by families and school. They also reported a consistency of application, were more likely to believe they gad an adult in their life who genuinely cared about them and to whom they could go for help, who would listen, whom they trusted and who would provide support to them if needed.

OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE

Sadly, our female students feel less than hopeful about how they are going in life and where their lives are leading them. They are more likely to be losing sleep from worry as well.
When it comes to their fitness and their feelings of self-worth that stem from this, our female students are in the lowest 30% of Australian young women reporting they ae struggling to maintain a healthy body through fitness and 73% indicated they do not get enough sleep each night. Diet was another challenge with female students less likely to eat well to stay well and more than 60% were not eating breakfast. The lack of sleep, poor diet and no breakfast will impact their ability to learn and do well at school and it seems this is having a negative impact on their mental health, feelings of self-worth and their self-confidence. In addition, these issues impacted on female students’ motivation to learn which was 10% lower than the rest of the Australian cohort. 62% of female students do not feel good about themselves with around 60% feeling pessimistic about what their future may look like. This then impacted on their engagement in their learning and their connected ness to school where they felt they did not feel positive about their future. There was a less than hope filled outlook.
Male students were more positive and hopeful although they reported higher rates of unhappiness and feeling depressed. The male students also reported that they were not getting enough sleep. The male students’ outlook for their future was more positive. Like the female students the male students are not sleeping for long enough at night but feel as though they are able to manage their fitness and diet to maintain health.
CRC students exhibit a greater sense of trust, forgiveness, honesty and compassion than their peers reported.

The College is now exploring programs that we could provide to support students across a range of the areas that have been identified by students’ responses as needing support / information or access to information and training. There is no one answer to helping our young people grow up with the skills to be able to tackle whatever life may present them. The challenge is not the schools’ in isolation either. The most successful strategies involve school, families and other organisations that young people become involved in such as sporting clubs and in particular programs involving other young people such as Parish Youth programs. Young people achieve more in their education when they feel that they are safe, their life is fulfilling and healthy within themselves. The diagram below illustrates the connections between each of these three resilience pathways to various aspects within each pathway that contribute to a young person building up that part of their resilience within themselves. We can all, family, school and community help our young people to build up their resilience through each of these pathways each of which requires a range of programs / discussions / support in order to enhance the positive and in so doing decrease the negative aspects that take from a person’s resilience.

These results may be a starting point to prompt discussion in your own family. Do not attempt to cover all areas outlined in this summary in one discussion though. Pick a few themes and raise the results at the dinner table or when in the car driving somewhere with a little time. Explain that you read a certain statistic and you were surprised and alarmed. Tell them you were wondering how they felt and why the specific aspect of the survey might have given the results the College received. After all, th