Student health and wellbeing

The pastoral care provided by our teachers ensures your child is given a feeling of belonging, support to develop a positive self image, and help to manage the successes and disappointments in their life.

Effective pastoral care in public schools is underpinned by a positive school environment where:

• teacher-student relationships are based on trust and mutual respect
• each student’s physical, social, intellectual and emotional development is promoted
• there are strong partnerships between the school, parents and community.

All staff in schools have a duty of care for the safety and welfare of your child while they are at school.

Teachers exercise their professional judgement to achieve a balance between making sure students don’t face unreasonable risk of harm and encouraging independence and maximising learning opportunities.

This duty of care underpins and drives the policies and practices of all Western Australian public schools.

Teachers have a responsibility and a commitment to helping your child to learn, including teaching the behaviours needed to succeed at school as well as later in life.  Parents and schools play a shared role in a young person’s learning and work together to provide the best environment for learning successful behaviour.

Every school has a behaviour support plan that is developed in consultation with the school board or council.

The plan outlines how successful student behaviours are taught, encouraged and assessed and how the school will respond when students are having difficulty achieving these behaviours.

Should the school’s behaviour support plan not be working for your child, the school will work with you and your child to develop a more personalised behaviour support plan.

Schools consider the key values of learning, equity, excellence and care when developing and implementing their behaviour support plans. In particular, relationships with the school community are built on a basis of respect and responsibility to promote the resilience and wellbeing of your child, the staff and other students.

You can obtain a copy of your school’s behaviour support plan by contacting the principal.

School principals implement protective behaviours education that aligns with the Western Australian Curriculum across all phases of schooling. This is a recommendation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and part of the Child Protection in Department of Education Sites policy.

Parents and carers play a vital role in helping your children develop personal safety and resilience skills. It’s very important children hear the same messages at school and home. Working together, we can help our children to recognise unsafe situations and be proactive and confident in their response.

For more information about protective behaviours and how you can reinforce these messages at home, access the Protective behaviours parent resource: Schools and parents working together to help keep children safe.

School chaplaincy services form part of the wellbeing and pastoral care services provided within the school community. Pastoral care is the practice of looking after the personal needs of students, not just their academic needs, through general support and advice. The chaplain can assist with the development of programs to support the emotional wellbeing of all students.

It is optional for schools to offer chaplaincy services. If you do not want your child to participate in the program you can withdraw by advising the principal. If you choose to opt out your child will not have any formal pastoral care contact with the school chaplain.

The school chaplaincy program has been created to support schools in funding and providing services.

Contact your child’s school for further information about the chaplaincy services available to your child.