Welcome back

It is hard to believe that we are in week two of the first term for the year. All classrooms have been focusing on establishing Classroom Libraries and setting up the expectations for the 2020 school year.

We have introduced Home Reading diaries for all students this year. The purpose of the diary is to record nightly reading in. As a school, we will be celebrating student achievements with their home reading at assembly. When students reach 50 and 100 nights they will be able to chose a book to congratulate them on their achievements. Mrs Mathers and I have been enjoying seeing students diaries this week and how proud they are to share their reading.

Newsletter

As you may notice this edition of the newsletter is in our new format on inewsletter. This format is to enable families to easily read it on a device or hard copy. We will be emailing the newsletter to all families rather than sending them home in a paper format. If you do not have your email address on file at the school please give us a call so we can add it into Sentral.

The newsletter will also be uploaded to our website each week. We will only distribute paper copies of the newsletter after this week to families who request this. If you require a paper copy please contact the office.

Building Update

Today I had the opportunity to visit the building site and our new classrooms. We are hoping to have these buildings for the start of Term 2. The new gymnasium is a truly amazing facility. Every time I visit the gym I am so excited about the opportunities it presents for our schools.

The Co-Location planning is well underway. Paul Marshall, the Principal at Echuca Specialist School, and I are catching up on a regular basis. We will keep the community updated on the progress of the Co-Location through the newsletter.

Sentral

Echuca Twin Rivers uses Sentral as a management tool to communicate with families. Sentral has the capacity for parents to use a portal which has a range of information that is important for parents. There is the capacity to update family information, report absences, access the newsletter and reports.

Early next week all families will receive their login for the parent portal. We will be booking our Meet and Greet Parent Teacher conversations on Sentral this term. Information on how to do this will be provided with your login details. If you have any difficulty logging into Sentral, please do not hesitate to contact the office.

Meet and Greet Parent Teacher Conversations

This year our Meet and Greet conversations between families and teachers will take place on Tuesday 25th February from 1pm to 6pm. Students will be dismissed at 1pm on the day and asked to attend the conversation with families.

As a school we feel that meeting your child's classroom teacher at the beginning of the year is invaluable in developing a positive home school partnership. We are also wanting students to be involved in this conversation to support their learning. If you need to speak with your child's teacher on your own, please don't hesitate to ask for another meeting time.

Booking will be made via Sentral for this terms meetings.

If your child is a bus traveller we will supervise them with our specialist staff in the Library on the day. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Uniform

Thank you to all of our students who have been attending in full school uniform. It demonstrates such pride in our school when students are in uniform and represents our school values of Respect and Responsibility. I would like to thank parents and carers for supporting us with this. If you need assistance with uniform please don't hesitate to contact the office. If students are out of uniform, we will supply them with the correct piece of uniform to change in to for the day.

School Leaders

It was such a privilege to listen to our Year Six students make their Student Leadership speeches this morning. Congratulations to all of the students who applied for a role. We will announce our students who received a leadership role at assembly next Friday. Parents will be contacted to attend if your child has been elected as a School Leader.

Newsletter

As you may notice this edition of the newsletter is in our new format on inewsletter. This format is to enable families to easily read it on a device or hard copy. We will be emailing the newsletter to all families rather than sending them home in a paper format. If you do not have your email address on file at the school please give us a call so we can add it into Sentral.

The newsletter will also be uploaded to our website each week. We will only distribute paper copies of the newsletter after this week to families who request this. If you require a paper copy please contact the office.

School Wide Positive Behaviour

At the end of last year we received some fantastic news that we were the recipent of a grant of $9000 from the Moama Bowling Club. This will support the implementation of our School Wide Positive Behaviour framework. The money will allow us to display our matrix around the school and launch it in the school community. Thank you to the Moama Bowling Club for their generous support.

SWPB

Our Value focus next week is Resilience. We are teaching our students about trying their best.

The SWPB focus is:

I will try my best.

SWPB

Our Value focus next week is Resilience. We are teaching our students about trying their best.

The SWPB focus is:

I will try my best.

Family Picnic

We hope that all families can join us on Tuesday evening from 5pm - 6.30pm for the ETRS Family Picnic. Please BYO dinner. There will be an ice cream truck van onsite for the purchase of ice-creams and live music performed by Lokki Somerville. The weather at this stage looks fine with a top of 29 degrees. Please note that is an official school event and alcohol is not permitted.

SCHOOLS’ PRIVACY POLICY

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - FOR PARENTS

The Schools’ Privacy Policy informs the school community that information about students can be shared to fulfil the schools’ core functions of educating and supporting our students.

The Schools’ Privacy Policy establishes a clarified ‘need to know’ framework, where school staff share information about students with other staff who need to know as part of their role. This is consistent with Victorian privacy law.

Who does the policy apply to?

The policy applies to all central, regional and school staff including principals, teachers, visiting teachers, social workers, wellbeing staff, youth workers, nurses, Student Support Service officers (SSSOs) and all other allied health practitioners. This means the ‘need to know’ framework below also applies to all school staff, whether employees, service providers (contractors) and agents (whether paid or unpaid) of the Department.

Need to know:

All school staff can, and must, share information about a student with other staff who ‘need to know’ that information to enable the school to:

-educate the student (including to plan for individual needs or address barriers to learning)

-support the student’s social and emotional wellbeing and health

-fulfil legal obligations, including to:

take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of reasonably foreseeable harm to the student, other students, staff or visitors (duty of care)
make reasonable adjustments for a student’s disability (anti‑discrimination law)
provide a safe and secure workplace (occupational health and safety law).

Who decides who ‘needs to know’?

Subject to the principal’s direction, each staff member decides who needs to know specific, relevant information about a student, based on the ‘need to know’ framework.

Sharing relevant information with other staff who ‘need to know’ is very different from idle conversation or gossip.

School staff are entrusted with a large amount of important information about students. Staff must treat all such personal and health information sensitively and respectfully, and not share it other than on this ‘need to know’ basis.

What information and records can be transferred to a student’s next Victorian government school?

When a student has been accepted at another Victorian government school, the current school can provide personal and health information about the student to that next school.

This can occur in any, and all, of the following ways:

verbally: principal to principal (or authorised representatives).
on paper: by providing copies of the student’s records (including any health reports) to that next school
electronically: including through the CASES21 transfer function; the Student Online Case System (SOCS) and/or via email.

Principals (or authorised representatives) determine what information to provide to that next Victorian government school based on the ‘need to know’ framework:

What information does the next school ‘need to know’ to properly educate or support the student, and fulfil the school’s legal obligations?

‘NEED TO KNOW’ framework

Duty of care

A school’s duty of care to students means that a principal or other member of the leadership team needs to know about any reasonably foreseeable risk of harm to anyone because of the student’s behaviour, disability, family circumstances or any other relevant circumstances related to the student.

So, for example, if there is a reasonably foreseeable risk to anyone because the student:

displays violent behaviours
is a victim or perpetrator of bullying, assault or age-inappropriate sexualised behaviours
has emotional, wellbeing or self-harm issues

then staff must tell the principal (or other member of the school leadership team).

The principal will then share relevant information with any other staff member that needs to know because they work with, or supervise, the student. Staff must provide the principal with enough relevant information required to adequately fulfil their own duty of care – so that the principal can fulfil their duty of care too.

Importantly, when there is a reasonably foreseeable risk of harm, staff should act on that information and share the information with other staff who ‘need to know’, even if the student or parent asks that information not be shared.

Anti-discrimination law

A school’s obligation to provide reasonable adjustments for students with disabilities (regardless of whether they are eligible under the Program for Students with Disabilities) means that relevant information about a student’s disability and their needs must be shared with all staff who work with or supervise that student.

This is required to enable the school to make properly informed decisions about what adjustments are reasonable, and then to implement those adjustments.

This may also be required to meet the duty of care to that student (for example, a student with a medical condition who may require treatment).

This means that relevant information must be shared with staff who work with or supervise that student, to enable them to:

understand the student’s disability and how it affects their learning and social or emotional wellbeing
implement reasonable adjustments at school, including understanding all recommendations made by the student’s treating practitioners.

The relevant school policies are followed by school staff when engaging with parents, such as wellbeing and behavior polices. Go to your school’s website for relevant polices.

School staff are available to provide further information about school policies and handling of personal information or contact the DET Privacy Officer at privacy@edumail.vic.gov.au.

School's Out!- Quality Out of School Hours Care