Catholic School Parents Victoria has partnered with Catholic Education Melbourne to update a Parents as Partners Policy and to create an overarching statement about what it means to partner with parents in Catholic learning communities.

As part of our ongoing commitment to work in partnership with educators, two CSPV parent delegates currently sit on the Parents as Partners Reference Group, exploring various resources and contributing parent perspective to this most important policy.

The development of this policy is no easy task, as we explore the complexities of relationships in primary and secondary schools and how they might improve. We have discovered there are differences that need to be nurtured and understood as an essential element in the success of our students. The more we understand what it means to work together in partnership to develop the whole child, the culture of learning communities will improve with a flow on effect on the relationships that students themselves will be influenced by and able to learn from in the years to come.

Parent leadership is about leading by example and the more we collaborate and value each others' perspective when it comes to the education of children, we will provide opportunities for children to be surrounded by the support and guidance they need to thrive in their learning.

CSPV was able to attend earlier this year, a dialogue session with Dr George Otero from Relational Learning in New Mexico. Dialogue is one of the key tools to use when engaging and learning in partnership with parents. Using these sessions to learn from each other is critical to the successful development of the Parents as Partners statement and policy. It was great to see system leaders, Principals and parents learning together and providing various perspectives on this most important element of school culture.

We look forward to continuing to provide parent perspective on this group and contributing our voice to policy and resource development across Victoria’s Catholic education sector.