Headmaster's

Message

That is not OK!

Please read the important content below before watching the latest of my video updates that responds to the Premier’s announcement today. A link to this video can be found towards the end of this article.

Every person in our community is valued, deserves to be treated with honour and respect, and provided conditions under which they can flourish. However, if every young people were prepared to say “That is not OK!”, the world would be a safer place.

As I mentioned earlier this term in Pulse, schools are required to demonstrate that they provide a safe and supportive environment for their staff, students and parents. This requires schools to have a range of policies pertaining to enrolment, safety, student wellbeing, child protection, student attendance, student behaviour management, making complaints, appealing decisions, as well as the prevention and management of harassment. The policies relevant to parents of our School are available on our website, nonetheless, it is crucial that we highlight the salient points from each from time to time. 

In this article, I will highlight one of the most crucial of these policies,  Anti-Harassment Policy, and address both the School’s commitment and the responsibilities of parents and students for us to sustain a staff, parent and student culture free from harassment.

The School proactively promotes positive community behaviours in its students and the values that underpin them. We seek to nurture a culture that ignores and forgives minor incidents of mistreatment, but readily reports incidents of serious or repeated mistreatment. We then employ a range of strategies and procedures for monitoring, communicating and managing matters relating to the behaviour of students. We differentiate inappropriate behaviour from harmful behaviour. Inappropriate behaviours are not serious enough to require a consequence in the first instance, but are considered opportunities to train young people in positive community behaviours. The vast majority of behaviour management at BMGS is of this type. Harmful behaviours, however uncommon, are intentional or reckless and have the potential to cause harm to people, relationships or property and disrupt School culture or students’ learning and therefore require a consequence. For all harmful behaviours, the School applies consequences that ‘naturally’ follow from the behaviour wherever possible.

Some harmful behaviours involve acts or omissions reasonably likely to cause physical, emotional or psychological harm. At BMGS, we call such behaviours ‘mistreatment’. We acknowledge that mistreatment happens in all communities and use such incidents to teach students about the impact of their behaviours and mentor them in alternate ways of conducting themselves. Harassment is repeated mistreatment. When the School identifies a pattern of such behaviours, we consider it much more seriously and create a plan to help the student change their behaviour. Bullying is harassment where the victim is at a real or perceived power disadvantage, regardless of the type of power. This is a far more serious behaviour and the School does not tolerate it. We have found however, that the word ‘bullying’ is a much over-used word.

Parents and students of the School community are asked to support our approach to the management of mistreatment and harassment by using the words as your children’s teachers do, in order to limit the use of the term ‘bullying’ to those very few instances where it is justified. Parents are also encouraged to nurture in their children the willingness to ignore minor incidents of mistreatment, to challenge more serious incidents or repetitions, to forgive those who are repentant and to stand up for themselves and their peers, not by retaliating, but by reporting incidents of serious or repeated mistreatment. Finally, parents are encouraged, as a last resort or when their children are very young, to advocate for their children where required.

With the cooperation of parents and students, the School will do all that it can to protect your children from harm and teach them how to live together in community. Enjoy today’s video update and …

Go team!

Mr Ian Maynard

Headmaster

COVID Briefing #4

Please click here to view the Headmaster's latest COVID Briefing