ICT

ICT Acceptable Use Agreement

All Year 7–12 students at St Mary’s College are provided with their own laptop as part of the learning resources for secondary school. Having a dedicated device supports your child’s learning in class and at home, and helps teachers deliver more engaging, personalised lessons.

To help keep students safe online and protect school systems, these laptops are set up with security and monitoring tools. These tools help us maintain good ICT hygiene by protecting student data, detecting suspicious activity, and reducing the risk of viruses and other cyber threats.

As part of our device management process, you will soon receive an acknowledgement in PAM with important information about appropriate use, care of the device, and what to do if a device is damaged. Please keep an eye on your PAM account and take a moment to read and accept the agreement when it arrives.

Year 7 and Year 10 students and parents completed the acknowledgement of the ICT Acceptable Use Agreement at the beginning of the year. There will be no requirement for this to be repeated for any parents of a Year 7 or Year 10 student.

Recent Microsoft Login Issues Affecting PAM Access

Over the past two weeks, a number of parents have contacted the school regarding difficulties receiving the email verification code required to log in to PAM. We appreciate families bringing these concerns to our attention.

Following investigation by our ICT team, in consultation with SIMON support and other MACS schools, we confirmed that this issue was linked to a global Microsoft email service disruption.This disruption affected email delivery for Microsoft-hosted accounts such as Outlook, Hotmail, and Live, which prevented some verification emails from being received during this period.

If you experienced similar issues and your registered email address is not associated with a Microsoft email service, we encourage you to contact the school so our ICT team can investigate your specific situation further.

The school continually monitors system performance and responds promptly to issues that are identified. As digital security standards continue to increase worldwide—which is essential for protecting personal information—major service providers occasionally need to implement additional safeguards or respond to external security threats. 

Unfortunately, these circumstances can sometimes cause delays or interruptions that are outside the school’s direct control and are not always immediately communicated by the provider.

Please be assured that the school takes data security and system reliability seriously and works closely with service providers to resolve issues as quickly as possible. We thank parents for their patience and ongoing cooperation.

Mrs Andrea Richards

andrea.richards@smseymour.catholic.edu.au