Child Safe Standard 3 

Child and student empowerment

Ensure that children, young people and students are empowered about their rights, participate in decisions affecting them and are taken seriously.


To support establishing minimum requirements and continue to embed the Child Safe Standards, Clonard commit to the following:

Inform students of their rights

  • Provide age-appropriate and accessible information to students, such as information about:
    • the school’s Child Safety and Wellbeing Policy and Child Safety Code of Conduct
    • how adults in the school should behave.
  • Inform students of their rights and special protections, including the right to:
    • live and grow up healthy
    • have a say about decisions affecting them
    • get information that is important to them
    • be safe and not harmed by anyone.
  • Share information under the Child Information Sharing Scheme and Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme, and:
    • work to build trust by being open and transparent about information sharing, and keep the child and family informed each time their information is shared, if it is appropriate, safe and reasonable to do so
    • seek and consider the views of the child (or the relevant family members) about sharing their confidential information if it is appropriate, safe and reasonable to do so.
  • Provide information through the curriculum via relevant subject areas to promote:

Empower students to contribute to school life

  • Display visually engaging and easy-to-read posters promoting student voice and agency.
  • Discuss commitment to student voice at enrolment and organise orientation activities focused on activating student voice.
  • Conduct year-level meetings and form groups to discuss students’ rights and safety issues.
  • Invite students to provide feedback on school-wide decisions and take their views into account in school decision-making.
  • Involve students in consultation processes and inform them of their impact on decision-making.
  • Demonstrate that the school takes students seriously by acting on their concerns, noting that what might seem unimportant to an adult may be important to a young person.

Strengthen peer support for safety and wellbeing

  • Acknowledge sexuality and gender diversity by identifying safe spaces where students can go if they need support.
  • Implement regular whole-school wellbeing assessment surveys e.g Pulse and Resilient Youth surveys
  • Establish student action teams to investigate issues of inclusion and exclusion.
  • Discuss healthy boundaries for friendships.

Establish protective factors

  • Teach students practical protective strategies, including:
    • what to do when they feel unsafe
  • Provide contact information for independent child and youth advocacy services or helplines.
  • Support all students to identify trusted adults and friends they can talk to about a concern at school, at home or in the community.
  • Deliver age-appropriate curriculum content about respectful relationships, sexuality and consent through the Respectful Relationships teaching and learning materials (or equivalent), within a Catholic context.
  • Empower students with the knowledge that adults are accountable and that students have a right to safety.
  • Provide training to staff and volunteers to be attuned to signs of harm and risk factors in students.
  • Remind staff and volunteers to recognise that students might communicate in different ways, including through verbal and non-verbal cues, play, body language, facial expressions, drawings or behaviours.
  • Follow through on your commitments – show students that the leadership team and staff are trustworthy, and take their worries or concerns seriously.