Internal reviews: Term 4 2018

Supporting Student Well-being

• This new topic for all schools sets out how we support student well-being and respond to students with well-being issues. It contains links to resources for schools, students, and parents.

Self-harm

• This new topic contains specific information about 1) acting on concerns that a student is self-harming, and 2) responding to any incidents at school. It also contains links to resources.

Preventing and Responding to Suicide

• This topic has been revamped as part of the new Supporting Student Wellbeing section. We've expanded the topic and added links to the new topics. It aligns with the Ministry of Education resource kit for schools.

Staff Well-being

• As part of our commitment to health and safety, we aim to provide and maintain a safe physical and emotional environment and a positive, inclusive culture for both students and staff. This topic is the staff version of supporting well-being.
• As a result of our Behaviour Management review, we've added a comment about providing staff with appropriate support if they are involved in a confrontation with a student

Injury and Illness Support

• This new topic expands our Health, Safety, and Welfare section and follows (and links to) the Ministry's Injury and Illness Support Rehabilitation Guide.

Breaches of the Alcohol/Drug Policy

• This topic now lists initiatives for creating a whole school approach to reduce drug and alcohol related harm.

Media

• We have combined our Media and General Guidelines for Dealing with the Media into one topic. This topic includes comprehensive guidelines for receiving and responding to media requests, a statement about positive media relationships and publicity, and outlines how to respond to serious issues.

Use of Drones

• This is a new optional topic that outlines requirements for schools around the use of drones.

Firearms

• This is a new optional topic to help schools create their own firearms policy based on the activities allowed at your school, eg, gun club, firearms demonstrations, pest control, etc.. If you don't allow firearms on to your school, there is an alternative topic with that statement.

Health Education

Consultation on the Health Curriculum

• We've combined the generic Health Education and Consultation on the Health Curriculum topics, clarified the requirements around consulting with the community, and stated the aims of consultation.

Board Responsibility

• The list of overarching board policies on primary, composite, and intermediate schools now includes specific sub-policies. The secondary topic already listed these sub-policies.

Managing Income and Expenditure

• We have added text to this bullet point = "All cash and cheques received are paid to the school office and properly receipted, either to the individual, or as a bulk receipt initialed by the depositor."
• This is because for transactions such as sausage sizzles or ice-block sales, it is impractical to issue individual receipts. Instead, the lump sum is receipted and the "depositor" then initials a lump sum receipt as a third party to the transaction. The same process should be used where teachers collect money and send it to the office for banking, if it is not to be receipted to the individual.