PV2021 Online Conference - 11 October
Our e-brochure will be sent to your mailbox in the coming week. The program is shaping up as follows:
- 10:00am - Conference Opening and address by the Deputy Premier and Minister for Education & Minister for Mental Health, James Merlino.
- 10:30 am - Caring through Connection with Dr Elspeth Stephenson, University of Tasmania
- 12:30am - Parents Victoria AGM A necessary part of the PV program
- 1:00pm - Collective Conversation on Consent facilitated by Debbie Ollis, with special guests Chanel Contos and Katrina Marson.
- 2.00 pm - Conference close
Put the date in your diary now. Bookings will open soon.
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Tips to help families cope during lockdowns
A video recording is now available of a University of Melbourne webinar on 30 August, with a panel of psychologists, health experts and families.
Here are some key points we gathered from the webinar:
- It's important for the parents/carers to set the emotional tone: 'alert' vs 'alarmed'
- Adults need to be optimistic where able, keep up a message of hope
- Adults 'put on your own oxygen masks first' i.e. make sure you are OK so you can support others
- Having a daily schedule/routine is essential for work/learning/play and eating
- Research says structure helps, and it's even better if you factor in special or fun at-home activities for children/young people as a treat/surprise event (ie family board game, family bike ride or whatever is permissible within current restrictions)
- Covid impact is not within our control, so the medical/mental health practitioners emphasised parents need to be very self-aware when overloaded, having some 'time out' even if it's to listen to some music, getting in the garden, ringing a friend to off-load.
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Get on board and grab this
great opportunity:
Free family memoir project
Chapters of Our Lives is an online course that will guide your child through the process of interviewing family members and creating a family memoir. Normally the course costs $200 but Parents Victoria is funding a limited number of free places for our subscribers.
What a great lockdown activity for kids and parents alike!
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Senior Secondary Certificate reform
Victoria is moving to a new integrated senior secondary certificate that will bring together the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) and the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL).
The move to a single certificate will occur in stages. The first stage is the introduction of a new vocational specialisation pathway within the VCE commencing in 2023. This will replace the existing VCAL at the Intermediate and Senior levels.
A new foundation pathways certificate to replace Foundation VCAL will also be created to formally acknowledge student achievement, facilitate clearer pathways and provide a more enriched curriculum offering.
The next stage will see a fully integrated senior secondary certificate rolled out across all Victorian schools and senior secondary providers by 2025.
A recent article in the Herald-Sun explains the changes (subscription only).
Need more information?
PV is considering running a webinar for parents on the senior certificate reforms. If you have questions about the reforms or would like to express your interest in a webinar, please email our office at office@parentsvictoria.asn.au
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Disability inclusion in Victorian schools
In the 2021-21 Victorian state budget, the government invested nearly $1.6 billion in Disability Inclusion, a package of reforms to provide extra support for children with disability in Victorian government schools. In 2021, schools in Barwon, Bayside Peninsula and Loddon Campaspe areas are the first to transition to Disability Inclusion.
How it works
Disability Inclusion includes the introduction of the Disability Inclusion Profile, a written description of children’s strengths and needs at school, designed to help schools give children the support they need. It also includes new, additional funding for schools to provide more support to more students.
Schools in Barwon, Bayside Peninsula and Loddon Campaspe may choose to complete a Disability Inclusion Profile in Term 4 2021 for children transitioning to their schools with known high and complex needs.
Families that have children commencing school in 2022 can speak with the principal of their preferred school to find out more. Families of students with disabilities that are currently at school can also talk to their school principal to find out more information.
More information
More information will be provided about Disability Inclusion in future newsletters, including advice about process guidelines and materials to support families to learn more about Disability Inclusion.
For more information about Disability Inclusion, the Disability Inclusion Profile and for more information about which suburbs are in the first Areas to transition to Disability Inclusion, visit the Education Department Disability Inclusion web page.
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Survey: Schooling from home
Attention all parents: you are invited to complete an online survey about your experiences of schooling your child at home. The purpose of the study is to understand parent perceptions of schooling at home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact that it is having on what and how children learn The anonymous survey will take approximately 5-10 minutes to complete. The study is being conducted by a group of academics from the School of Education at Macquarie University.
Prize draw
Parents who complete the survey will go into a draw to win a 14” HP 2-in-1 Touchscreen laptop for your child or one of ten $US50 Amazon Gift cards. Additionally, you can opt to be sent a summary of the results.
Privacy
You will not be asked to provide your name in the survey, so all responses will be anonymous. If you would like to receive a copy of the results or enter the prize draw for then you will be redirected to a separate survey to provide your email details. If more than 25 responses are received from a school, the Parents & Citizens Associations of that school will receive a report relating to the anonymised data for their school.
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Know your families
Before schools (or Parent Clubs) can effectively engage with the families in their school community, they have to understand them. What language or cultural barriers might be in the way of effective engagement? Knowing their families and their cultural beliefs around education will assist schools to engage those families in a more culturally responsive way and give all families a sense of belonging.
Our website has advice from relevant organisations on how to engage effectively with:
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School levies are voluntary
As reported recently in the Age, Education Department guidelines for schools have been 'refreshed' to give schools and families clarity and transparency about payments. Schools can continue to seek voluntary financial contributions towards classroom materials, educational programs and operating expenses, and invite parents to buy educational items on a user-pays basis. But the guidelines make it very clear: schools may not pressure parents to make voluntary payments on curriculum essentials such as stationery, devices, camps and excursions.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Victorian parents paid a total of $400 million in levies in the 2019-20 financial year, more than any other state. Perhaps that's because Victorian state schools are the lowest-funded in the country, with per-student funding about 7 per cent below the national average. A 2015 Victorian Auditor-General’s report on school payments found that while school levies began as an adjunct or support to government funding, they have become essential to school budgets (more detail below).
Our view
PV concurs with Education Minister James Merlino’s comments as reported in the
Age a year ago that the policy guidelines on school levies had to be "refreshed to give schools and families further clarity, consistency and transparency ".
Mr Merlino emphasised that the policy itself has not changed.
PV understands the ‘refresh’ was a result of an audit of 400 schools which confirmed our long-standing concerns that schools were not applying DET policy consistently.
PV agrees with Principals; we don't want any cuts to any educational programs or services in our State Schools. However, as our Executive Officer Gail McHardy said in the Age article back in September 2020, "We support principals being able to deliver a quality service but they need to be very mindful that you don’t transfer the responsibility onto the community,"
Auditor-General's report
PV would like to remind readers what the Victorian Attorney-General's audit report Additional School Costs for Families said back in 2015.
Dr Peter Frost, Acting Auditor-General stated in the report (p iii) covering remarks:
"The audit found that parents payments vary significantly from school to school and in some cases, parents are being charged for items that should be free. While parent payments have become critical to the operation of government schools, DET has little understanding of what an efficient and economical school looks like. It is therefore poorly positioned to shape decisions made by the Commonwealth and state governments about funding for schools.
As part of this audit, I have also produced a Victorian school funding explained information piece. This is a critical piece of work that exposes school funding arrangements to public scrutiny for the first time in Victoria. I hope that this will help to inform public policy debates around school funding and will assist parents to understand how schools are funded and to ask critical questions of their schools about how their funds are used."
Comments from Auditor-General John Doyle include this: School principals have pointed to the inadequacy of school funding as the main reason for increasing parent payments." (p vii)
The bottom line
School principals have expressed concerns that many innovative and valued programs such as music programs, excursions and camps would have to be abandoned if parents don't continue to pay for them.
In conclusion, PV's question still stands - why are there shortfalls in our public school budgets, which place the burden on our Principals and School Councils to find that money?
PV strategy goal
One of the goals in our Strategy document is:
We advocate for fair, simple and transparent funding of State Schools.
You can download the full strategy document from our website.
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Wanted: your good news stories
Despite the current tough times, we know that Parent Clubs are still working to support their school communities. We'd like to recognise the great work that's going on in Parent Clubs with feature stories in Parents Voice. Tell us what you're up to! How are parents managing to keep going and support each other during the pandemic? We want to share it with our readers!
Contact our Communications Officer Alan Davies at adavies@pvexec.com.
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Vax webinar
The Health Department ran a webinar for parents and final-year students about Covid vaccinations last week. If you missed it, a video recording and the presentation slides are available:
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Alumni programs in schools
What is an alumni program?
“Alumni” simply means former students of your school. Alumni programs, where schools keep up a connection with alumni and invite them back to the school to connect with current students, have many benefits for the school, students and community.
The benefits
- Stronger connection between school and community
- Inspire current students with real-life examples of post-school education and career paths
- Advice for students from someone they can identify with
- For alumni, a sense of pride and ongoing connection to their school
- For school staff, the satisfaction of re-connecting with former students and celebrating their successes
Support from Ourschool
Ourschool is a not-for-profit alumni program for state secondary schools, the first of its kind in Australia. It’s a subscription-based service that enables public high schools to grow supportive alumni networks. They work with school staff and alumni to inspire and support students through meaningful alumni engagement. They provide program materials, processes and infrastructure to start and grow the school’s alumni program.
There is lots of information on the Ourschool website, including an article from June 2021 titled “Parents, the unexpected fans of alumni programs“, abut the alumni program at Western Heights College in Geelong.
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Helping children with their mental health
Are you a parent/carer who has experience caring for a child aged 5-12 years with a mental health problem while in primary or elementary school?
Are you an advocate for better mental health?
University researchers need you to help them develop new guidelines on how to provide mental health first aid to children.
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NAPLAN results - our view
You may have noticed some media reporting recently about the strong performance of Victorian students in the 2021 NAPLAN results, despite months of remote learning.
First. let's give credit to parents, teachers and students for working together on learning from home. It has been a great joint effort and shows how well collaboration between schools and families can work.
Limits of NAPLAN
However as we have consistently said, NAPLAN results are not the whole picture. Maintaining the aspects of education that NAPLAN doesn't measure has also been a challenge for parents, students and teachers; things such as social development, creative thinking and a spirit of curiosity and enquiry. There have been many difficulties but once again, where schools and families work together well, they are doing an amazing job.
Devil in the detail
It's also worth noting that these results are only the preliminary 'big picture' statistics - the more detailed demographic data will be available in December. These results will be more revealing as they will shed light on how equal - or unequal - the results have been across the Victorian student population.
More information
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Tutors program successes
We reported on the Tutor Learning Initiative in Parents Voice issue #5,and in this issue we're glad to follow up with a couple of success stories from the program.
Gleneagles Secondary College
Gleneagles Secondary College in Endeavour Hills has seven tutors supporting selected students in small groups, or individually if needed, to build their literacy and numeracy skills. A Year 8 student from the school said, "It's very comfortable. I'm not stressed, like there are always mistakes, we all make mistakes and there's certain things that we don't understand but it is easier for us to talk to the teacher about it."
Read the full story on DET website
Melton West Primary School
At Melton West, parent Liz Darwish has watched her son, who is in Grade 1, make fantastic progress through the tutoring initiative. "In a short period of time, he went from very apprehensive, timid and fearful to a few months later, blossoming. He will sound out words and can read and write independently.'' she said.
Read the full story on DET website
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Rural schools shine in lockdown
The Country Education Partnership (CEP) has gathered some inspiring stories of how schools in rural and regional Victoria are going the extra mile to keep students and communities engaged during the lockdown. The examples include:
- A network of chools challenging each other to dress up and read a story for Book Week - and share the videos!
- A primary school Principal who makes himself available daily on Google Meet if students want or need to chat about anything at all.
- A special school where staff drive all around the district delivering work packs to students and food to families, prepared by the catering team.
Well done to all those schools for the way you're making the extra effort and coming up with creative solutions for your communities!
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Want to share our content?
Some of the articles in this newsletter may be of interest to your school community. Please feel free to copy and shere articles in your school newsletter or other communication channels.
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