CSPWA Newsletter Christmas Edition
- Welcome from our CSPWA President
- Release of the Pathways to Post-School Success Expert Panel Report
- Ministerial Roundtable
- Social Media Legislation
- Update from our Liaison Officer - Nicole Beresford
- Parent Induction Evenings
- Smartphones, devices and eRideables as gifts: what parents need to know
- Christmas Message
- Office Closure, December 2024 - February 2025
- Term 1 2025 Planner
- MultiLit Literacy Centres
The season of Advent is upon us, as 2024 draws to a close it’s a perfect time to reflect on the year that has been and look forward to what 2025 might bring. Over the 4 weeks of Advent we are encouraged to focus on the themes of hope, peace, love and joy, to consider where we have experienced these in our lives and how we have brought them into the lives of others. In our modern world time for reflection is often hard to find but as we approach Christmas it’s good to take a little time to appreciate the many blessings we have received and gifted to those around us.
2024 was a special year for all of us at CSPWA as we celebrated our 70th anniversary, 70 years of representing and advocating on behalf of parents who choose a Catholic Education for their children in Western Australia. It was wonderful to see so many people, past and present staff and councillors, P & F representatives from all over WA, teachers, principals and clergy come together at our conference dinner to honour the dedication of parents in our catholic schools and celebrate the valuable contribution they have made to Catholic education in our state.
With both a state and Federal election taking place in 2025 the CSPWA council and staff are working hard to ensure that your voice is being heard by all who seek to represent us. The issue of funding for our Catholic schools is being place front and centre by our team and we will continue to advocate on your behalf as the elections draw ever closer. As parents we all have a role to play here, it’s vital that we take every opportunity to remind those who seek our votes that capital funding for our schools is a live issue and one that will impact on how we vote. If you would like some more information on this please contact the CSPWA office, the staff will be happy to assist you. CSPWA is always open to suggestions from parents on issues they would like us to take up, please feel free to contact our staff or a councillor if there is an issue that you are passionate about and would like us to get involved in. We also strongly encourage P & F’s to nominate members to join council, our voice is so much stronger when we join together.
With Christmas just around the corner many of us will be thinking of gifts for the loved ones in our lives. A recent article in the news highlighted the huge number of toys that are donated to charity shops in the weeks after Christmas, as children’s cupboards are cleared to make way for new toys. Volunteers lamented the fact that this did not happen prior to Christmas when the demand for toys for those in our community who are struggling is so great. As a volunteer with St Vincent de Paul this really resonated with me, so many people in our community are struggling with cost of living pressure this year and the requests for assistance are growing every day. I would encourage anyone who has the means, to support our charitable organisations with donations of toys and food and to nurture the spirit of giving in our young people by asking them to donate items they no longer use to those less well off in our community.
On behalf of everyone at CSPWA I wish you and your families a blessed and peaceful Christmas and hope that your 2025 is filled with hope, peace love and joy,
God Bless
Alan
Catholic School Parents WA were pleased to be a part of the environmental scan, in addition to providing a submission to the consultation process.
Please click here to view the full Pathways to Post-School Success Expert Panel Report.
Purpose of the Roundtable
The Minister for Education, the Hon Jason Clare MP, Minister for Education and Youth of Australia recently invited parent representative organisations to come together to discuss priority areas for national attention. Catholic school parents across Australia were represented by Siobhan Allen, Deputy Chair of Catholic School Parents Australia (CSPA) and Sara Rose, Executive Member of CSPA. The meeting took place in Sydney on 22 November and provided an opportunity for all present to discuss the Australian Government’s focus on improving education outcomes and equity in education across Australia by ensuring all students, regardless of their background or which school they attend, have access to high quality education.
The roundtable recognised that parents have an important role in improving student wellbeing and learning outcomes. Parents have a unique insight into the problems and complex challenges, both at school and away from school, that confront our children and young people every day.
Participants in the roundtable discussion included parents from the peak parent bodies from each education sector as well as several state parent bodies. Siobhan was delighted to catch up with Pania Turner, President of WACSSO whilst at the meeting!
Topics up for discussion included :
- Student wellbeing for learning and engagement
- School system level prioritisation of parent engagement in learning
- Addressing emerging challenges – social media & mobile phones, school attendance and school refusal
Attendees were also asked to consider the following key questions:
- How can the Government and parents work more effectively in partnership to support aystem?
- How can the Government and parents work more effectively in partnership to support a better and fairer education system?
- What could be done to support student engagement and lift learning outcomes?
- What is working well in schools to improve student wellbeing?
- How can the Australian Government better engage with parents and students from priority equity cohorts?
Catholic School Parents Australia (CSPA) along with Catholic School Parents Western Australia (CSPWA) are grateful to the Australian Government for including the important parent perspective in the conversations that matter, and look forward to continuing this dialogue in order to enhance the learning and wellbeing outcomes for all our children and young people.
Social Media Legislation passes through Parliament
Following on from the motion passed at the Catholic School Parents WA AGM earlier this year, CSPWA, as requested by our members put forward a submission to the ‘Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society ’ advocating for raising the social media minimum ago from 13 – 16. As a result of this submission, Siobhan Allen, Executive Director was invited to appear at a public hearing along with other parents in order to emphasize and amplify points made in the submission.
This provided a great opportunity to influence change for which CSPWA are most grateful to the Australian Government and whilst there is no doubt that it will not be an easy task, it will form part of a multi-faceted approach to ensuring the safety of our children and young people whilst online.
Therefore, it was particularly gratifying to see the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 pass through Parliament on November 29 2024. Parents are notably pleased with the fact that ‘the laws place the onus on social media platforms – not young people or their parents - to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 years of age from having accounts and ensures systemic breaches will see platforms face fines of up to $49.5million’.
Please find the full media release below....
"The Albanese Government has delivered on its commitment to support parents and protect young people by "setting a minimum age of 16 years for social media, with legislation passing Parliament today.
The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 is a landmark measure that will deliver greater protections for young Australians during critical stages of their development.
The laws place the onus on social media platforms – not young people or their parents – to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 years of age from having accounts, and ensures systemic breaches will see platforms face fines of up to $49.5 million.
The minimum age will apply to ‘age-restricted social media platforms’ as defined in the Bill, which includes Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X and others.
Importantly, the bill ensures that the law is responsive to the ever-evolving nature of technology, while enabling continued access to messaging, online gaming, and services and apps that are primarily for the purposes of education and health support – like Headspace, Kids Helpline, Google Classroom and YouTube.
It contains strong privacy provisions, with platforms required to ring-fence and destroy any data collected once it has been used for age assurance purposes. Failure to destroy data would be a breach of the Privacy Act, with penalties of up to $49.5 million.
The bill also makes clear that no Australian will be compelled to use government identification (including Digital ID) for age assurance on social media. Platforms must offer reasonable alternatives to users.
The bill has been designed following extensive consultation with young Australians, parents, experts, industry, community organisations and National Cabinet, and builds on broader efforts by the Government to hold platforms to account for ensuring the safety of their users.
The new laws will come into effect no later than 12 months from passage of the bill, allowing the necessary time for social media platforms to develop and implement required systems".
Tis the season of Annual Community Meetings and as we mentioned earlier, we have been busy supporting schools to navigate through the process of calling for nominations to the P&F committee and conducting a vote if need be. It's great to see so many P&Fs have full committees going in to 2025. If you have any vacancies on your P&F committee and would like some tips on how to attract Office Bearers, please reach out to us via email support@csp.wa.edu.au or via phone on 9338 9987.
Siobhan and I have recently met with the 'Governance' and 'Finance' Teams at CEWA to liaise on the updated P&F Terms of Reference document and also to clarify some off the financial processes, about which we have received many enquiries this year from P&F Treasurers. As a result we have developed a new tip sheet for Treasurers, which can be viewed here. We hope to have termly meetings with the Finance Team in 2025, so if you have questions please don't hesitate to reach out to us and we will endeavour as always to provide you with appropriate advice.
We are also happy to announce that the P&F email address project is about to be finalised and your school will soon receive correspondence from the Digital Technologies Team about how to set these up at your school. We thank you all for your patience while the team has worked on this throughout the year to ensure that any bugs are sorted out and security is of the highest level.
This term we have also been working on updating some of our existing resources, in addition to developing a range of new ones. I'd like to acknowledge our wonderful Admin Officer Jonelle who has spent many hours working on these. These new resources include information for parents of school leavers and how to use Seqta Engage, in addition to a suite of fact sheets addressing such topics as the school ACM, screen use, times of transition (to kindy, primary and secondary). We have also updated our existing resource on the role of the Class Representative. To view these resources please head to website:
In Term 1 2025, CSPWA will be offering our P&F induction evening across 3 locations- north, south and central. We also hope to run a session in the Bunbury and Broome Dioceses from Term 2.
These sessions are open to any new members of the P&F who would like to learn more about the committee member roles, and also to existing members as we will be providing updates on the P&F Terms of Reference and Finance Guidelines.
If you have any topics you would like us to cover at the induction session, please email us at support@csp.wa.edu.au.
For catering purposes it is essential that you book a spot at one of the 3 sessions.
For details of the sessions and to reserve your place, please see below.
Central Session:
St Peter's Primary School Inglewood
Wednesday 19th February at 6pm
RSVP: https://events.humanitix.com/cspwa-induction-evening-central-location
North Session:
Padbury Catholic Primary School Padbury
Wednesday 12th March at 6pm
RSVP: https://events.humanitix.com/cspwa-induction-evening-north-location
South Session:
Emmanuel Catholic College Success
Wednesday 5th March at 6pm
RSVP: https://events.humanitix.com/cspwa-induction-evening-south-location
With Christmas approaching, you might be looking to gift a phone or device to your children. How do you choose which one to buy? How do you protect your children when they're online? How do you protect the device? The Alannah & Madeline Foundation have some great advice on this topic. Click here for further information on how to approach technology for kids.
The office of the eSafety Commissioner has an informative guide on their website covering recommendations, key features to consider and tips to ensure your family stays safe. They advise to be smart, safe and secure when choosing tech gifts for children and young people. Click here to read the full guide.
CSPWA have also put together a resource sheet on Android and Apple Parent Controls. You can find these resources below.
If you’re thinking about buying your young person an eRideable, make sure that you pick one that is in line with the rules. The Road Safety Commission advises you look out for the size and weight, power and speed, design, lights and reflectors, sounds and helmet standards. To find out more, visit the Road Safety Commissions eRideable buying guide here.
CSPWA has also compiled two resources on Parent Controls for both Apple and Android devices - please click on the appropriate link below.
Siobhan, Nicole, Jennifer and Jonelle would like to sincerely thank everyone who has contributed to making our 70th Anniversary Year one of positivity and celebration. We have, as always, enjoyed all our interactions with the many parents who contact us, attend events and provide feedback when requested and we look forward to the next 70th years doing the same!!
As we approach the end of term and the festive season, it's a wonderful time to reflect on the Christmas story. This timeless tale of hope, love, and generosity reminds us of the importance of kindness and community. Just as the birth of Jesus brought light into the world, we too can bring joy and warmth to those around us. Let's carry the spirit of Christmas in our hearts, cherishing moments with family and friends, whilst remembering and reaching out to those who may be struggling at this time of year.
The four of us wish you all a very happy and holy Christmas season and we look forward to working together again in 2025 ensuring the very best outcomes for all our children and young people who attend Catholic schools in Western Australia.
Introducing MultiLit Literacy Centres new Holiday Intensive program. Offered both in-centre and online, this program allows students to complete two term’s worth of lessons over an intensive two-week period or continue over the holidays.
Designed to help achieve faster results, it’s also great for those who find it difficult to fit in term-based tuition due to other commitments. Contact MultiLit Literacy Centres now to enrol for summer: https://literacycentres.multilit.com/contact-us/