The ultimate purpose of schools is to ensure that students develop and succeed as learners. The school leadership ensures staff come together regularly to focus, learn and collaborate on issues of importance to student learning. Building and maintaining positive and caring relationships between staff, students and parents is paramount to establishing a successful school culture for learning.. The School Leadership team and all staff take a proactive and caring stance in building a strong collegial culture of mutual trust and support whereby parents are treated as partners in the promotion of student learning and wellbeing. The school works to maintain a learning environment that is safe, respectful, tolerant, and inclusive whilst promoting the need for intellectual rigour and high expectations amongst staff and students.
The Characteristic’s named attributes are:
- the school strives to create an environment reflective of its high expectations that all students will learn successfully;
- the staff strive for professional development to ensure they are at the top of their game as professional educators;
- all staff of the school demonstrates an understanding of the importance of positive and caring relationships to successful learning, and work to build mutually respectful relationships across the school community e.g. School Community Partnership Agreement with Indigenous Community;
- the school is an inclusive community and ensures students with special needs are welcomed and their families know what the school can do to support their learning e.g. Individual Education Plans are formulated and agreed;
- students are aware they have the right to respect, to learn and to feel safe;
- interactions between staff, students, parents and families are caring, polite and inclusive(e.g. Personalised Learning Plans for Indigenous students);
- the school views parents and families as integral members of the school community and recognises them as the child’s first teachers;
- the school recognises that the individuality of each student (material and spiritual) is at the heart of Christ’s teaching, thus placing a high priority on student and staff wellbeing and has processes in place to provide both academic and non-academic support to address individual needs;
- the school appreciates and values students' varying cultural and religious backgrounds and works to build the cultural and religious competence of school staff;
- the school has clear strategies to promote appropriate behaviour - including agreed responses and consequences for inappropriate student behaviour - and the school provides sufficient support for teachers to implement these policies;
- the school works to create an attractive, contemporary and engaging physical environment that is supportive of learning;
- the school promotes a culture of collaborative and individual inquiry and innovation, where creative exploration and independent learning are valued for staff and students alike;
- all students and staff have an obvious sense of belonging, all parents are welcomed and all staff, students and parents speak positively of the school;
- the school promotes and maintains a culture of excellence in learning and teaching.
