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VICTORIAN CHILD SAFE STANDARDS

Child Safe Standard 9

Child safety in physical and online environments

Ensure that physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children, young people and students to be harmed.

Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ staff continue to work diligently to ensure all the Child Safe Standards are actioned, with a focus on continuous review and improvement. For example we:

Promote a culture of online and physical safety for all students

• Supervise students properly in all settings, including the playground, excursions and camps.
• Give particular attention to the safety, diverse needs and vulnerabilities of students in each activity or setting. Consider whether there are any barriers that might prevent students from raising concerns.
• Inform students and their families about appropriate use of the school’s technology, safety tools, and how to seek help and report concerns, including cyberbullying and online grooming.
• Keep up to date with current online safety issues and expert information from specialist government and non-government bodies, including the Office of the eSafety Commissioner and eSmart Schools.
• Promote activities in the school community that connect schools and communities, and raise awareness to prevent bullying and violence (e.g. ).
• Create a respectful, sensitive and safe environment for people who may be experiencing family violence, as required of schools under , enabling a child or young person to feel comfortable to talk about their experiences and seek support.

Manage risk in physical spaces

• Identify and document the school’s child safety risks in the school’s risk register or equivalent.
• Consider the range of school environments and the nature of physical spaces, including onsite buildings and grounds, classrooms, corridors, and pick-up and drop-off areas.
• Consider off-site physical environments for student use and, where reasonably possible, inspect these sites and venues for events, excursions, camps and international student accommodation ahead of time.
• Consider risks arising from child-to-child and adult-to-child interactions in physical and online spaces.
• Keep records of risk management activities, including  for camps and excursions.
• Provide training and refresher training to staff and volunteers on risk management policies and procedures.

Supervise appropriately

• Be aware of risks posed by dark spaces, stairwells, private spaces and corners in school environments, and develop strategies to address these risks.
• ​Inform students about spaces that are off-limits, including out-of-bounds areas, storerooms and staffrooms.
• Meet the minimum ratios of staff and volunteers to students for different types of activities (see )
• Keep records of any court orders in place regarding access or intervention orders, and communicate to staff who can collect students in these circumstances.
• Use observation aids when appropriate, such as observation windows, concave mirrors and CCTV, and consider the balance between appropriate visibility and respecting staff and students’ privacy.
• Undertake works to improve lighting in poorly lit areas.
• Let students know how to raise concerns and where to go if they need help.
• Organise professional learning to discuss risk and harm prevention and hazard awareness with staff, volunteers and school council members.
• Keep records of incidents that occur, including accidents and medical events.
• Review incidents against policies and procedures, including seeking student feedback on how incidents were handled and how safe they felt, and make improvements as needed.

Promote student safety online

• Give students opportunities to learn, play, create, entertain, make new friends and stay connected.
• Facilitate age-appropriate ways for students to use the internet and social media through   and .
• Inform students about online safety risks, including:
  • cyberbullying/trolling
  • invasion of privacy or digital surveillance
  • inappropriate sharing of images
  • phishing, harvesting of personal information or data theft
  • identity theft
  • malevolent software (malware)
  • offensive images and messages
  • age-inappropriate online content
  • impersonation/catfishing/deep fakes
  • grooming.
• Outline acceptable use of personal devices for students.
• Use filtering software on school-based devices.
• Encourage parents to use parental controls on personal devices.
• Advise students on how they can seek help from a trusted adult if they are exposed to inappropriate imagery or content that upsets them.
• Monitor online activity and respond to breaches of the online policies and procedures with appropriate consequences.