14 February 2017

With the school year now under way it is the perfect opportunity to look at how the staff at Catholic Education Melbourne are working together to deliver the best possible outcomes for students.

Catholic education has a mission of inclusion, and the Catholic Education Services staff group is working to maximise access and opportunity for all our schools though its School Engagement Model, creating opportunities for collaborative learning and strategies for improvement to maximise available resources and build a culture of learning together.

Student Diversity is continuing its work assisting schools with the task of creating the cultural and behavioural supports needed for academic and social success, working with individual schools to tackle specific needs.

Our Catholic identity is at the core of everything we do at CEM and a final draft of the renewed Religious Education Curriculum Framework has been submitted for ecclesiastical approval. It is hoped that this will be available by the end of Term 1. In the meantime, Catholic Identity is continuing its vital work with the daily prayer resource, strengthening the capacity of teachers and staff of Catholic schools and offices to build a rich culture of prayer.

Child safety is an area of the most fundamental importance, driven by Christ’s message of love and the innate dignity of each human person, not merely legal compliance. Catholic schools already have stronger and more consistent policies and practices for the safekeeping of young people as they learn. Further initiatives will be rolled out over 2017 and the final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, due to conclude at the end of 2017, will continue to inform and shape our responses to the protection of children across all settings and in the community.

On the technology front, eight primary schools are now working with ICON Release 1 and the team is strengthening its training program and automating the data migration program for the next group of schools to go live this year.

Finally, stand by for a rebuilt and refocused Catholic Education Melbourne website, with a new emphasis on parents and prospective parents and a fresh feel and look and a more interactive and engaging experience for users.

Fighting for fair funding

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham made a significant admission in one of his first major interviews for the year, telling the ABC ‘there are schools … in the non-government sector who are getting less than what formulas would say their fair share is’, a message we have been striving to put to the Minister for some time.

In my press release, I said that the Minister’s acknowledgment was welcome, as negotiations for the new school funding agreement to apply from the start of 2018 get under way. Catholic schools have a special mission to cater for the disadvantaged and given the Minister’s remarks we trust this will be recognised in the final package.

The Age blunders again

The Age’s education writers have failed basic maths, describing a change in the proportion of total enrolments across all school sectors Catholic students represent as a decline in the number of enrolments overall.

I used a Letter to the Editor to highlight the fluctuating nature of enrolment figures between sectors, along with the continued strong performance of Catholic schools in Victoria in capital-constrained circumstances and in the face of massive spending in the government sector. Unlike The Financial Review, which made similar statistical assertions late last year, The Age was unwilling to publish the letter. Despite our best efforts, this is a continuation of the same pattern of behaviour we saw by the newspaper in 2016, when similar issues were raised in letters to the editor.