Respectful Relationships

This year, Newport Lakes Primary School is continuing the delivery of the updated Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) curriculum, which is mandated across Australia and embedded within the Victorian Curriculum from Foundation to Year 12. 

Since commencing this work in 2017, Newport Lakes Primary School has been recognised as a lead school in the area of Resilience, Rights, and Respectful Relationships (RRRR). We proudly continue to promote resilience and wellbeing, rights awareness, respectful relationships, inclusion, and positive gender norms, with the aim of supporting students to thrive and contribute to safe, respectful environments.

Respectful Relationships education supports students to develop the social, emotional and relationship skills they need to thrive at school and beyond. At its heart, the program is about fostering a positive school culture where every child feels safe, valued, and respected. It helps students learn how to understand and manage emotions, build healthy relationships, solve problems, show empathy, and seek help when needed.

While we may all come from different backgrounds and hold different beliefs, we share the common values of respect, kindness, and care for one another. These shared values sit at the core of the Respectful Relationships curriculum.

Whole-School Approach

Respectful Relationships is not a standalone program. It is a culture that is embedded across classrooms, playgrounds, sporting activities, staff practices, and community events. This whole-school approach supports positive learning environments and contributes to improved wellbeing, behaviour, relationships, and academic outcomes for students. As part of our commitment to RRRR, we have invested in a wide range of high-quality resources to support teaching. This includes rich, age-appropriate literature that provides meaningful, real-world examples for students. Some examples are included below:

What Students Learn

Students from Foundation to Year 6 engage in age-appropriate, evidence-based learning experiences drawn from the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships teaching materials. These resources were developed by experts from Deakin University and the University of Melbourne and are used across primary and secondary schools in Victoria. During 2022–23, a range of stakeholders were consulted to identify updates needed to ensure the F–12 learning sequence remains current, relevant, inclusive and grounded in research. These included:

• Respectful Relationships Advisory group
• Koorie Working Group
• Primary and secondary students
• Primary and secondary teachers
• Parents and carers 
• LGBTIQA+ Advisory group

Across the year, students participate in learning focused on eight key areas of social and emotional learning:

• Emotional literacy
• Personal and cultural strengths
• Positive coping
• Problem-solving
• Stress management
• Help-seeking
• Gender norms and stereotypes
• Positive gender relations

What Respectful Relationships is: https://youtu.be/Pt5dA-mo1kk

Why This Matters

Research shows that respectful relationships education has a positive impact on students’ mental health, behaviour, engagement in learning and relationships with peers and teachers. By teaching these skills early and reinforcing them consistently, schools play an important role in shaping respectful attitudes and behaviours that extend beyond the classroom and into the wider community.

The Respectful Relationships initiative also responds to recommendations from the Royal Commission into Family Violence, recognising that education is key to creating long-term cultural change for future generations.

Family violence takes many forms, including physical, emotional, sexual, psychological, social and economic abuse, and can occur within families, intimate relationships and communities. Children are victims when they witness, hear or are exposed to the impacts of family violence, even if it is not directed at them. While family and sexual violence occurs across all cultures and backgrounds in Australia, women are most often affected. Exposure to family violence can have lasting impacts on children and increases the likelihood of experiencing or using violence later in life.

Working Together

More than 1,950 government, Catholic, and independent schools are receiving training and support to implement a whole-school approach to Respectful Relationships. This means building a school culture that promotes inclusion, gender equality, and positive relationships in every area of school life.

We value strong partnerships with families and encourage parents and carers to talk with their children about what they are learning. If you would like to explore the curriculum further, you can view the full Respectful Relationships resources online through the Victorian Department of Education. 

The full RRRR curriculum can be viewed here: Respectful Relationships resources | Teach Respectful Relationships | Arc

Together, we are creating a school where every child feels safe, respected, and empowered to reach their full potential, while embracing and implementing the curriculum we are mandated to follow as a government school.

Thank you for your support as we work in partnership with you to grow healthy, happy humans.

Carly Bannon

NLPS Principal