Speaker: Dean Woodgate, Manager, Independent Schools VRQA.
A very important part of the regulatory responsibility that we have is to ensure schools are compliant with the care safety and welfare aspects. It encompasses a range of various aspects.
So, the next section will focus on duty of care, supervision, child safety and emergency management. Again, I refer you to the guidelines, the minimum standards on the VRQA website for more information.
So as the slide says, there are 3 important aspects. So duty of care cannot be delegated. The school always holds a responsibility and the minimum standards note that the duty of care includes the following. That a school owes all students a duty of care to take reasonable measures to protect them from reasonably foreseeable risks of injury. That it owes a duty of care, to take reasonable care that any student or other persons on the premises will not be injured or damaged because of the state of the premises, including things done or omitted to be done to the premises.
That it owes a duty of care to take reasonable precautions to prevent the abuse of a child by an individual associated with the organisation, while the child is under the care supervision or authority of the organisation and that different and sometimes greater measures may need to be taken for younger students or students with disabilities in order that the school can discharge its duty of care.
So, we will look very carefully at all of the aspects of everything that you submit, and the duty of care is something that we particularly will look very closely at. Particularly in the environment. And things you might like to consider is supervision policy and how you need to consider specific risks in the environment in a location, such as are there separate risks posed by a building on a different site?
Where are the yard duty areas? Is there good visibility? Are there any hotspots? The risk of bushlands. So, you’ve got native wildlife, snakes and bush by itself. Is there a sufficient water supply? And then the needs of the specific student cohort. The needs of students in wheelchairs, for example. Can they get safely around the school? Neurodiverse children. Will they have a high propensity to abscond and how to ensure that they remain within the school grounds?
So, we’ll go to a case study, another case study that looks at some of those aspects. You’ll see that we’re looking at a site that’s co-located, and it’s currently being renovated. It’s a prospective independent primary school located in a rural setting that is at bushfire risk. It’s on the bushfire risk register. It’s to be co-located with another site with an established secondary school that is currently being renovated.
Three of the prospective students have been diagnosed as being neurodiverse. One student has physical disability, and 2 other students identify as First Nations. As discussed before, all schools need to consider what’s reasonable with respect to adjustments for the student cohort and specific challenges that exist in the proposed school site.
The proposed supervision policy is generic and has not considered the environmental risk to the school. There are references to the yard duty areas but there’s no evidence provided on a floor plan or map of the school. The suite of child safety policies and procedures have not been contextualised. And again, this is something that comes through many applications that we see, the lack of contextualisation. I can’t reinforce that enough. And policies procedures in this case have not been contextualised for the anticipated student cohort.
While a student safety officer will be appointed at the school, there’s no information about who that person would report to, whether it’s the school’s governing body or school board on safety matters. The provided emergency management plan that came as part of the application appears to have been copied from another school, as references to the other school are in the footer. Similar to the case study we used previously.
So that gives you some food for thought around types of things to look for. So with this one, we’re looking particularly at the list; you’ve got first aid arrangements for all students. The anaphylaxis Ministerial Order 706 and the specific requirements of that order. Behaviour management anti-bullying, including online bullying and complaints. Then there’s child safety, including mandatory reporting, failure to disclose, failure to protect and grooming offence and reportable conduct.
Part of this is how a school ensure that staff understand the obligations and staff volunteers, ministers of religion, and all of those people who are in contact with students. The mandatory reporting also refers to all those various people and an understanding from staff on what are reasonable grounds. And I’d refer you to the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing and also the Department of Justice for information on this area.
Ministerial order 1359 came into being in July 2022. There are 11 standards, with requirements for schools that are set out in the order and the implementation of policies and procedures again must be contextualised. Schools must identify and record child safety risks and strategies to mitigate and manage those risks. And there’s a comment there, that it’s a living document. It’s a document that must be readily updated, must be readily reviewed. And, as I say again, must be contextualised to your school environment. There are a number of good tools on the Victorian government website, particularly the Child Safe Standards for schools and boarding premises. Child Safe Standards page and Child Safe Standards action lists for non-government schools as well.
Updated