1. Principal's News Week 9, Term 4 2016

Junior Nativity Performance
Congratulations to the junior school on a beautiful rendition of the Nativity Story in church this morning.

Baptism
Congratulations also to Kelly Sinclair and her family.  Kelly was baptised after mass this morning.

Thank you to parent helpers
A big thank you to Adele Whiston who manages our uniform shop, Leanne Tuffley who processes our Subway orders and Melissa Davison who manages the Scholastic book club.  And to all the parents and helpers who have contributed their time and energy over the year - a very big thank you.

Student Wellbeing Survey
The Board of Trustees conducts a student wellbeing survey twice a year.

Its good to see most of our children recording feeling safe at school.

The main reasons children didn't feel safe at school were:

• Fear about being hit by a ball on the playing field or falling off play equipment,
• Some relationship disagreements or frictions.
• Fear of killer clowns
• Fear of what would happen if there was an earthquake or tsunami and they were in the toilet.

The first two points go to show the big influence media has on what our children are thinking and feeling (the survey was done just after the Kaikoura earthquake).

Its heartening to know our systems of monitoring our children and their relationships are effective and there were no surprises there.  It was also good to find out about the anxiety around the toilet area.  We have been able to reassure children about our systems for checking all areas in an emergency.


Social Media Safety

(Source: Linneyville. Social media apps image via Shutterstock.)

What the children do on social media outside of school is beyond the school's jurisdiction.  However we would like to remind families of the age limits for social media.  Our school student gmail accounts automatically freeze if children try to access social media.

There is a reason for these age limits.

Once your child is engaged in social media they are part of the adult world.  Anyone who's seen or read "The Lord of the Flies" knows what can happen when children engage in an adult world before they are ready Lord of the Flies trailer.  None of us would let our 10 year old go down town and hang out in a pub or nightclub on Saturday night.  Social media is just the same, it is an adult world.  Also there are international laws protecting the privacy of children and if your children have signed up to these accounts their personal information including anything inappropriate they might do is no longer private.

Instagram actively encourages people to notify them of any underage users.

 I strongly suggest:

• that families either ensure that underage children are not engaged in social media, 
• understand that allowing the child to create an account is fraud because they have to lie about their age
• or if you have decided to let your child do this, to very closely monitor all online interaction.

God Bless,
Mrs Frances-Rees