Living with Strength and Kindliness

'Let's talk about consent"

A spotlight has been shone on the need to teach respectful relationships and consent in schools.  All secondary schools in Victoria have been mandated to teach consent education in their curriculum programs.  This call for consent education has prompted us, at St Joseph’s College to review current programs that cover sexuality education including consent and relationships education.  We have a number of programs across our school curriculum that are designed to teach relationship education in our school’s learning programs, in particular our Christian Education for Personal Development programs across Years 8 – 10, our Religious Education programs in Year 8 and 10 and our Health and Physical Education programs directly address issues of sexuality, relationships, gender identity and consent.

Last term a group of young women in our school raised some important points regarding the need to review and ensure that relationship and consent education was delivered in a direct and intentional way in our school’s curriculum across all year levels.  This group of brave young women have spoken to our College Leadership Team, the Kildare Ministries Trustees and our whole school staff, to voice their opinions and to implore their desire for change. We commend them and we thank them for expressing their views on behalf of the student community here at the College.

There are several things that will happen this term in response to the national spotlight on consent education, the desire for our school to be a place that encourages mutually respectful relationships and the desires of our student group to raise the profile of consent and positive relationships. 

This week we begin a campaign that is designed to continue over the whole of Term 3.  During this term we will be working with our whole community to revise and renew our programs and to enhance our community’s understanding of this very important issue.

Last week our Religious Education leaders and our Health and PE leaders attended an important professional development opportunity that will assist us to add value to the programs that we deliver here at the school. Our RE Programs take on a Christian Education for Personal Development focus in all of our personal development curriculum activities.

We hope that our campaign will be robust, provide clear information, promote inclusivity and safety and continue the work that is already being done in our school.

What role can parents play in consent education? 

To start with, we would like to encourage you to have a look at this video.  The video appeared as a link to the Pastoral Wellbeing section of the College newsletter on April 20. We invite you to watch the video again.

https://sje.vic.schooltv.me/wellbeing_news/special-report-conversation-consent

Kirrilee Westblade

Catholic Identity Leader

A word from our Student Voice

Following our Year 11 English orals at the beginning of Term 2, we (Milly and Holly) were inspired to use our voices to raise the issues that were presented in these oral presentations surrounding the issues of consent. We did this by speaking to two of our English teachers who provided us with the avenues to speak up to people of higher authority. We were lucky enough to have the help of Eden and Greer who contributed to the making of our presentation. 

We were given the opportunity to meet with Mr Delaney who organised for us to present to the Leadership Team, Kildare Ministries and all staff. This allowed us to speak about this issue and bring to light our experiences in and out of school. 

With the help of Mrs Westblade and Katie and Leonie from The Splendid Word, we have started forming a program which will take place over the next 10 weeks. Each week we will cover a different subtopic branching off the idea of consent to enhance our community's understanding of this very important issue and to hopefully influence a review and renewal of our personal development and sexuality education programs within St. Joes.

To do this however, we need the support and help of other interested students in our College. We are looking for a wide range of students, including different year levels and genders, to assist in the planning and implementation of this campaign. If this interests your children or you want to find out more, please reach out to Mrs Westblade at KWestblade@sje.vic.edu.au.

Our first meeting with our bigger group is planned for this Friday the 23rd of July. We look forward to seeing many young people from our school community there.

Milly, Holly, Eden & Greer.