Jodie McLeod

Hello All,

As I write this, I’m grateful for all the amazing efforts of parents, students and their teachers who have persevered through extended lockdown. The uncertainty and constant changes can be extremely challenging. We empathise with other States as they tackle the restrictions and lockdowns that we are all too familiar with here in Victoria.

Once again, our Catholic schools have been forced to conduct remote learning with families juggling home, work, family and home-schooling commitments. It can certainly be a trying time for many. We encourage you to remain patient during this time and acknowledge you for your ongoing support of your children’s learning. We have heard that many schools have used the previous lockdown experiences, and feedback from families and students to improve their online and remote learning practices which is positive news.

It has been another busy time for CSPV as we continue to work on various ways to support parents of children in Catholic education. We have actively been developing our parent representatives register with several more principals nominating a parent from their school to liaise with CSPV. We have included a list of schools that have already registered. If your school doesn't yet have a CSPV parent representative, please see our article for further details on how to encourage your school principal to nominate a parent for this important leadership position.

Parent representatives demonstrate leadership by providing an important voice and perspective in the education landscape, contributing to a range of opportunities provided by CSPV over the few past months. 

Catholic school parents throughout the state have provided their perspective on the new VCAA Senior Secondary School Certificate review to replace the current VCAL program, participated a parent engagement in reading survey for research being undertaken by the Murdoch University in Western Australia and contributed valuable feedback to the development of the MACS School Advisory Council manual through an online forum. We also arranged for a parent to be interviewed by Channel 7 news, to share their experiences of the impact of remote learning on families. 

We look forward to welcoming more parents as representatives to connect with CSPV. Our intention is to have a parent representative from every Catholic school across Victoria so parents are enabled to share their perspective in education to support students and their needs. The conversations shared with this group provide great insight for CSPV to share with education authorities, researchers and other key decision makers to make a difference in education.

At the end of July we held our quarterly CSPV council meeting. It was wonderful to welcome some new parent representatives to the meeting, some attending in person and others online. We facilitated a great discussion and workshop to begin developing an advocacy campaign based on understanding the curriculum and how to support children’s learning.

Through various discussions about the curriculum, we established important messaging and an approach that will form the base of a future advocacy campaign. It is always wonderful to have new people join the discussion who bring forward different ideas and thoughts. Your ideas and valued input helps to shape the messaging that needs to be heard in our schools and in the community.

Through our efforts to connect more regularly and purposefully with parents, we have now increased membership of CSPV. We recently welcomed four new member delegates and a new co-opted member.

These parents have committed to a two year tenure to contribute to the growth of CSPV as we work our way through the strategic plan and direction. We will work alongside these parents over the coming weeks to provide information and support them through an induction process. To ensure we are representing parent voice it is crucial that we have more parents on the council. 

Our focus now is to invite parents from our regional diocese to consider joining as member delegates. We are seeking 2 parents from Sale, 2 from Ballarat and 1 parent from Sandhurst. 

You will see a short introduction to each member in this issue of the CSPV Term Update.

Four major focuses for the remainder of this year for CSPV are:

• Stage 1of CSPV Parent Leadership Framework Project for Catholic Learning Communities
  • Advocacy campaigns - Parent Engagement in Curriculum, Child Safety, Wellbeing and Catholic Community
  • Increasing membership and parent representatives across the state
  • Review and redesign of CSPV website

We are currently updating our website and preparing for a review of the content. You will be invited to provide your feedback and ideas on how we can improve the site to ensure you are receiving relevant and useful information that can support you as parents of children in Catholic schools. 

Schools and our school communities are busy places, full of wonderful opportunities. We encourage you to continue working in partnership with your child’s school to best support your child’s learning as we continue to face challenges through these times of uncertainty.

From 1 September to 4 October (Feast day for St Francis of Assisi) we celebrate the Season of Creation. In his article, 'Change begins today' Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ says Pope Francis has made it clear that the most pressing task for the world is to respond to the threats to the environment.

In this issue of the newsletter we explore the Australian Bishop's Social Justice Statement 2021-22: Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, related to a call from Pope Francis through the Laudato Si’ Action Platform. This has been desitned to provide the opportunity for you and your school community to make a difference to the protection of our Earth for the future of our children. 

This month we pray for those who are separated from their families, as well as for those families that make the difficult decision to embrace lives in new homes, far from the lands of their birth.

We also pray for those who are fleeing their homes to find safety for their families, especially those in Afghanistan who have made the treacherous journey to find a safe place to live. We hope you welcome these families into your hearts, those of whom are settled here in our wonderful country, Australia.

Take care,
Jodie McLeod
CSPV Chair