A message from the BPS Education Committee

Welcome back to the new school year!

As we settle back into school routines, the Education Committee would like to provide the BPS community with a few reminders.

The role of the BPS Education Committee

One of the key roles of the EC is policy review. As a subcommittee of school council, the EC meet regularly during the year to review, update and get feedback on our policies in line with DET guidelines.

BPS School Policies

A reminder that our policies can be found on the school website. They can be found here or on the website under the School Profile Tab.

Mobile Phones and Smartwatches

Here is a link to our Personal Mobile Devices and Phones Policy. This policy refers to both phones and other devices like Smart watches. We would like to highlight a few key points below as a reminder:

“In accordance with the Department’s Mobile Phones Policy issued by the Minister for Education, personal mobile phones/devices must not be used at Brighton Primary School during school hours, including lunchtime and recess.”

All students who bring a mobile device to school must switch off notifications during the day and store it in their bag or locker. The device must not be used during the school day, including contacting parents/carers. Parents can support this by reinforcing this message at home and not sending messages during the school day. Please only send message at the end of the day. Please contact the office if you have an urgent message for your child.

In regards to smart watches, Brighton Primary School requests that students have communication capabilities disabled during school hours and that such devices are used as watches and step counters only.

Where the above cause a disruption to your child’s learning or the learning of others, the devices will be confiscated for the remainder of the day and returned to your child at 3:30.

Thank you for your help and support,

Joel Snowden | Assistant Principal

On behalf of the Education Committee

The Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund (CSEF)

The Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund (CSEF) provides payments for eligible students to attend activities like:

school camps or trips
swimming and school-organised sport programs
outdoor education programs
excursions and incursions.

Families holding a valid means-tested concession card or temporary foster parents are eligible to apply. A Special Consideration category also exists. Schools can receive applications from families over term one and two.

Families can list more than one student in the one application form if they are attending the same school.

Parents/carers wishing to apply for CSEF payments for 2022 must submit their application form to the relevant school by 24 June 2022. Only parents applying for the first time need to submit a form.

More information can be found https://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/programs/Pages/csef.aspx

Privacy Collection Notice

Information for students, parents and carers

The Department of Education and Training (the Department) values your privacy and is committed to protecting the personal and health information that schools collect.

All school staff must comply with Victorian privacy law and the Schools’ Privacy Policy. This notice explains how the Department, including Victorian government schools (schools), handles personal and health information. On occasion, specific consent will be sought for the collection and use of information, for example, for a student to receive a health service. Our schools are also required by legislation, such as the Education and Training Reform Act 2006, to collect some of this information.

Throughout this notice, ‘staff’ includes principals, teachers, student support service officers, youth workers, social workers, nurses and any other allied health practitioners, and all other employees, contractors, volunteers and service providers of the school and the Department.

On enrolment, and during the ordinary course of a student’s attendance at a school, schools will collect information about students and their families for the following purposes:

educating students
supporting students’ social and emotional wellbeing, and health
fulfilling legal obligations, including duty of care, anti-discrimination law and occupational health and safety law
communicating and engaging with parents
student administration
school management
supporting policy in relation to student education and wellbeing.

If this information is not collected, schools may be unable to provide optimal education or support to students or fulfil legal obligations.

For example, our schools rely on parents to provide health information about any medical condition or disability that their child has, medication their child may take while at school, any known allergies and contact details of their child’s doctor. If parents do not provide all relevant health information, this may put their child’s health at risk.

Our schools also require current, relevant information about all parents and carers so that schools can take account of safety concerns that affect their children. Parents should provide schools with copies of all current parenting plans and court orders about or that affect their children and provide updated copies when they change.

When parents enrol their child in primary school, they will be asked to provide personal and health information in several ways, including via the Enrolment Form, the School Entrance Health Questionnaire (SEHQ) and the Early Childhood Intervention Service (ECIS) Transition Form.

The Enrolment Form is used to collect information that is essential for the purposes listed above, and requests information such as:

Emergency contacts – Individuals parents nominate for a school to contact during an emergency. Parents should ensure that their nominated emergency contact agrees to their contact details being provided to the school and that they understand their details may be disclosed by the Department if lawful, e.g. in the case of emergency communications relating to bush fires or floods.
Student background information – Information about country of birth, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin, language spoken at home and parent occupation. This information enables the Department to allocate appropriate resources to schools. The Department also uses this information to plan for future educational needs in Victoria and shares some information with the Commonwealth government to monitor, plan and allocate resources.
Immunisation status – This assists schools to manage health risks and legal obligations. The Department may also provide this information to the Department of Health and Department of Families, Fairness and Housing to assess immunisation rates in Victoria, but not in a way which identifies students.
Visa status – This is required to process a student’s enrolment.

All schools may use departmental systems and online tools such as apps and other software to effectively collect and manage information about students and families for the purposes listed above.

When schools use these online tools, they take steps to ensure that student information is secure. If parents or carers have any concerns about the use of these online tools, please contact the school.

School staff will only share student and family information with other school staff who need to know to enable them to educate or support the student as described above. Information will only be shared outside the school (and outside the Department) as required or authorised by law, including where sharing is required to meet duty of care, anti-discrimination, occupational health and safety, and child wellbeing and safety obligations. The information collected will not be disclosed beyond the school and Department without parent consent unless such disclosure is lawful.

When a student transfers to another school (including Catholic, independent and interstate), personal and/or health information about that student may be transferred to the next school. Transferring this information is in the best interests of the student and assists the next school to provide the best possible education and support to the student. For further detail about how and what level of information is provided to the next school, refer to the: Enrolment: Student transfers between schools

Schools only provide school reports and ordinary school communications to students, parents, carers or others who have a legal right to that information. Requests for access to other student information or by others must be made by lodging a Freedom of Information (FOI) application.

To update student or family information, parents should contact their school.

For more information about how schools and the Department collect and manage personal and health information, or how to access personal and health information held by a school about you or your child, refer to the: Schools’ Privacy Policy

Wellbeing

Shae Langford-Jones