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Leadership, governance and culture

Guidance on Child Safe Standard 2: Ensure that child safety and wellbeing are embedded in school leadership, governance and culture.

Schools

To comply with Child Safe Standard 2, you need to:

  • establish a culture where child abuse and harm is not tolerated
  • take deliberate steps to promote child safety and wellbeing and protect children by embedding and promoting a child safety culture across the school.

On this page

All references to 'schools' in this guidance include school boarding premises.

Leadership, governance and culture

This standard emphasises the vital role that school leaders and governing authorities have in establishing:

  • a culture where child abuse and harm is not tolerated
  • effective systems and processes to implement child safe policies and practices and manage child abuse risks.

Schools must take deliberate steps to promote child safety and wellbeing and protect children by

  • embedding and promoting a child safety culture at all levels of the organisation
  • school leaders actively modelling such a culture
  • ensuring transparent governance arrangements.

Benefits of child safety in leadership, governance and culture

The Betrayal of Trust Inquiry and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse examined systemic failures to protect children. Many failures were the result of poor leadership, governance and culture, including:

  • leaders who failed to act or were complicit in covering up child safety complaints
  • governance structures that did not have adequate oversight or review mechanisms, and
  • cultures that put adult offenders or organisational reputation above children's safety.

A culture of child safety is driven by school leaders and supported by effective systems and processes.

Actions schools must take

To comply with this standard, at minimum, schools must:

  • develop, endorse and make publicly available a:
    • Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy
    • Child Safety Code of Conduct
  • develop, record, and implement risk management actions to make sure children are safe in the school environment
  • monitor, annually review and evaluate child safety and wellbeing risks
  • develop a policy or statement detailing the school's processes to meet Public Record Office Victoria Recordkeeping Standards (PDF, 653KB)
  • ensure records relevant to child safety and wellbeing are created, maintained and disposed of by Public Record Office Victoria Recordkeeping Standards
  • make sure school staff and volunteers understand their obligations in information sharing and recordkeeping.

Relevant standards

Implement Standard 2

Examples of actions to embed child safety and wellbeing in leadership, governance and culture

Resources

Training resources

Support

For further help to meet Child Safe Standard 2 and Ministerial Order 1359, contact child.safe.schools@education.vic.gov.au.

Possible next steps

Use this checklist to make sure your school is doing everything required to comply with this standard:

Read more about implementing all the Child Safe Standards in schools.

Education & training

Updated

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