Pastoral Care

The classroom teacher is primarily responsible for the pastoral care of the students in their class and is the first point of contact for students and their parents to discuss any concerns. Primary School staff meet regularly to discuss pastoral care matters and monitor specific support programmes for individuals, groups or classes. All Primary School staff and specialist teachers are informed of students with particular needs.

Students are supported to develop as a social member of the class and school. Primary School staff provide an environment that models positive behaviour, respect, compassion for others and good manners.

Our Commitment

To provide our students with a broad and balanced education by encouraging participation in as many learning areas as possible.
To encourage and enable students to recognise and value their gifts and talents and to develop these in appropriate ways.
To encourage students, through their exposure to Christian teachings, to explore issues of faith, spirituality and values.
To encourage students to develop and appreciate the important place that integrity, respect, tolerance and compassion have within the context of a modern society.

Social Skills Development

Classroom teachers guide students to develop in a learning environment that is welcoming and respectful. These lessons involve discussion of student experiences. Activities are used to explore ways of dealing with situations and to develop within children an understanding of the need to accept differences and protect, support and respect the rights of one another.

Pro-social teaching programmes involve cooperative and decision-making models including:

To Stop, Think, Do: This programme provides systematic social skills training for children utilising a series of activities to develop social problem-solving skills.
Decision-making: Identifying the problem and choosing the best solution that will result in a favourable outcome.
Shared Concern: The method of shared concern deals with developing empathy and concern for others by working with actual situations experienced by children at school. The programme focuses on solving social problems that arise in ways that involve a range of children, in a supportive process.

Primary School staff place a great deal of emphasis on modelling positive social interaction. Parents will be kept informed of behaviour management situations which require parental support.

Positive Discipline

Sometimes in a school community, breaches of rights and responsibilities can occur. These breaches are attended to by various staff members using appropriate strategies that support the notion of positive discipline and are applied according to the nature of the breach.

Positive discipline strategies stem from the view that students are treated with respect, dignity, compassion and consistency, in a caring environment.

Positive discipline is a:

process for teaching responsibility and regulation;
structured reinforcement and consequences to promote positive behaviours;
way of helping children learn to cooperate with others and manage their own behaviours;
means of ensuring a safe learning environment.

Teachers manage minor matters both in the classroom and in the playground. Repeated incidents or more serious breaches will be recorded, and parents informed. At times, other staff may be involved, including the Head of Primary School, Deputy Principal or the Principal.

Courtesy

The school encourages students to be courteous. Ways students can demonstrate courtesy include:

standing back to allow staff or visitors to go through doorways first.
being helpful and respectful to others, particularly visitors.
addressing staff or visitors politely, by name if it is known.
behaving correctly outside the school, especially towards members of the public.
removing hats when coming indoors.