Principal's Reports

Childsafe Update

Bunyip Primary School is committed to ensuring a child safe environment for all students. 

Our child safety framework includes policies, codes of conduct and procedures that explain how we support and maintain the safety and wellbeing of our students and protect them from harm. These documents are available on our website.

We have recently reviewed our child safety policies and practices to ensure they are up-to-date and effective. 

As part of this review, we have adopted the following additional practices:

• School staff and our school council continue to receive annual child safety training, with updated practices for induction and check-ins with any Casual Relief Teachers working at the school
• Volunteers at the school continue to have volunteer child safety induction prior to volunteering. For any volunteers attending school camp the school may ask for additional checks, such as references addressing suitability for working with children.
• New protocols around the supervision and use of the gender neutral and family restroom that is located between the student toilets in the central block have been introduced. All adults should use the staff toilets during school hours, as directed by signage on display at the school, with this toilet being locked during school hours.
• As well as the delivery of our Respectful Relationships program, we have further strengthened student empowerment and voice at our school by introducing a student suggestion box. Its availability will be announced at whole school assembly with the box being open for suggestions one week each term.
• Whilst the school will always prioritise use of buses over staff members taking students in private vehicles to events such as School Sports Victoria, new protocols have been established for any transportation by parent volunteers to such events requiring a completed parental consent form. Further information about this will be communicated in our next school newsletter.
• We continue to prioritise child safety with our supervision practices such as regular leadership walk-through of classes and active supervision by staff of students’ use of the toilet block at recess and lunchtime. 

Our students and their families are important partners in keeping our students safe. We value feedback and ideas on how we can continuously strengthen our child safety framework. 

If you have any suggestions or comments, please contact the office on 03 5629 5462 or at bunyip.ps@education.vic.gov.au.

Thankyou:

We are very grateful to the Teheneppe family for taking the time to work on our new chook enclosure over the weekend. P&F have fundraised for this work to happen and have liaised with a number of staff to design the extended chook house. We have also had a very generous donation of materials for the building of the chook house.

Thank you to the Nielson family for grading the car park on the weekend.

School Review:

Next term our school will be going through the review process. All schools go through this process on a 4 year cycle. This review process looks at our progress over the last 4 years and the areas of success against the goals set in our Strategic Plan. It will also identify areas for improvement and inform our next School Strategic Plan. A reviewer from outside the school will be running this process and during the course of review a team- including the reviewer, the Senior Education Improvement Leader, 2 principals from other schools, myself and leadership staff at Bunyip Primary School-will participate in classroom observations, look at school data, policies and processes, speaking to students, teacher and parents to inform the future direction for Bunyip Primary School.

Future Events:

Please keep an eye on compass for information and updates for Swimming, Father's Day Breakfast and Book Week. It might be a good time to start planning your book week costumes if you haven't already made a start.