The importance of school belonging & inclusion

Term 3 is a time of the year when students (especially our new year 7 students) and staff demonstrate their grit and resilience in coming to school everyday to engage in quality teaching and learning despite the dark and cold weather, and waning energy levels at times.  So it is with great optimism that we welcome the warm spring days and see the wins in our learning journey!  We are all so happy too that the upgraded staff and student toilets are finally open! We are finalising the works for the additional blocks this term, and these additional toilets will be open Term 1 next year.

Many events and achievements have taken place over this term, including the Arts week, Y10 Art Show, the BHHS Talent Show, ‘Write a Book in a Day’ (2 days due to popular demand!), Dance events, three-way conferences, 2024 student subject selections and course advising, and finishing the term with the All-Ensembles concert at the Box Hill Town Hall.

Congratulations to many of our students who have achieved highly in school and extra-curricular area this term including Dishita J. for the VCE Premier’s Award in Accounting (perfect score) and Melody L. for the VCE Premier’s Award in Chinese (perfect score); Alex R for achieving the top score in the Year 8 Australian Geography Competition; Celeste, Sienna, Katie and Jess for the second place win in division cross country (Year 7);  Amiya, Sabrina, Sophie and Kelvin who performed in the Victorian State School Spectacular; Alex and Nancy who made it to the State Final of the Prime Minister’s Spelling Bee; Ara for his Team Vic selection for upcoming National Championships in Canberra this month; and Nelini and Eshani our Year 11 students who competed so well in the Model United Nations National Competition supported by the local Box Hill Rotary Club.

We have been also successful in our application for a street library and we were told that it was because we ‘radiated enthusiasm for reading, your collective enjoyment of books and a willingness to share this love of books with those wandering by your school’ (Children’s Book Council of Australia).

Professional Learning Day on School Belonging and Inclusion

On Monday 14 August, all staff participated in professional learning activities based around the importance of school belonging and inclusion.

The importance of school belonging

Box Hill High School is a school many of us are very proud to belong to and we want to ensure that all our students and new staff who have joined the school over the last couple of years also feel a sense of school pride and that they belong to a great school.

School belonging is defined as the extent to which students (and staff) feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others in the school social environment. The benefits of school belonging include both academic and psychosocial outcomes. Evidence indicates that belongingness correlates with less absenteeism, better school completion, less truancy and less school misconduct as well as more positive attitudes towards learning and academic self-efficacy. 

In relation to psychosocial outcomes, school belonging has been associated with higher levels of happiness, psychological functioning, adjustment, self-esteem and self-identity and is inversely related to incidents of fighting, bullying and vandalism, disruptive behaviour and emotional distress, risk-taking behaviours such as substance and tobacco use, and early sexualisation.  It is particularly important for teenagers in secondary school as this is a period of identity formation and can provide a strong foundation for the years beyond school.

As part of our school strategic goal of creating a whole-school wellbeing framework, we explored classroom routines that build relationships, safety and positive attitudes to learning.  A draft policy on school belonging for students, parents, teachers and school leaders was developed and a DET resource High Impact Wellbeing Strategies (HIWS) was also investigated and linked to our current practices of making the classroom engaging and supportive of each student. 

The 7 HIWS are: 

• build relationships with students.
• facilitate peer relationships.
• establish and maintain classroom expectations.
• support inclusion and belonging.
• foster student self-efficacy.
• engage students.
• promote coping strategies and facilitate referrals.

More focused work on this whole school wellbeing approach will continue in 2024.

What is inclusive education?

Inclusive education means that all members of every school community are valued and supported to fully participate, learn, develop and succeed within an inclusive school culture.

The staff professional learning workshops on inclusion focused on strengthening school practices around ant-racism and safety based on a rise in casual racism across many primary and secondary schools. A school-wide approach to actively addressing racist banter and slurs, as well as more education around bullying and racism was developed. A session was run for students on the National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence on 18 August to raise awareness and address some common themes.

Why is inclusion important?

• All students feel welcome, supported, and valued.
• Facilitates student voice, agency and leadership. 
• Improves achievement, participation and wellbeing outcomes for all students, including those without disability. 
• Fosters lifelong positive attitudes towards diversity. 
• Supports students to perceive cultural connection positively.
• Builds a diverse, positive and welcoming community that values difference and diversity. 
• Fosters the belief that every child can learn given the right supports.

Disability Inclusion

The Victorian State Government is introducing a new initiative that will support students with a disability in every government school.  Disability Inclusion involves an investment of almost $1.6 billion to ensure every student at every ability thrives at school and in life.  Schools in the inner east of Melbourne like Box Hill High School will be part of the final roll-out of this reform in 2025, however we have already started our school implementation processes. A new Leading Teacher of Disability Inclusion position has been developed to ensure that we are continuing to provide a supportive school experience for all our students who have a disability. 

More information for parents and carers can be found on Disability Inclusion: a new approach for students with disability | Victorian Government (www.vic.gov.au)

SHARE principles for inclusive education

Legal obligations 

There are a range of legal obligations in Australia including:

• Equal Opportunity Act 2010
• Disability Discrimination Act 1992
• Disability Standards for Education 2005

Student Reports Review

Based on parent feedback about our reporting on student learning growth and achievement, we have begun a review of our student reports.  Parents were invited to attend a focus group this term and a number of parents attended this meeting to discuss areas for improvement with the current report formats, providing thoughtful and constructive feedback to inform our next steps as a school. 

Some of the key points were:

• Parents would like more indication of student achievement levels.
• Parents wanted more personalised feedback.
• Parents would like feedback on social-emotional behaviours in class.
• Parents would like more concrete feedback in the reports about areas for improvement so they can support their child’s learning.
• Parents found it difficult to interpret the Learner Behaviour rubrics. The suggestion was to provide more concrete examples of these effective learner behaviours in the interim reports.
• Parents would like more support using Compass and asked that Compass generate alerts when feedback was available on a task.
• Parents wanted more clarification around the ‘at standard’ rating as they felt there was a lot of variability in results at this level.

We will be continuing to develop our reporting of student learning growth and academic achievement for 2024 and will ensure that parents are provided with more information and support. We won’t be returning to individual written comments on reports (some teachers teach over 150 students a term), however we will seek to look at ways to provide more specific information on learning growth, behaviour in class, and achievement. Greater consistency in feedback provided on learning tasks will also be a goal.