Newington College Anti Bullying Policy

This is an important policy of the College that aims to protect the well-being of all students. It supports two key values of the school: care for others and self-respect.

While conflict sometimes occurs when groups of people gather, and the school will support students to resolve conflicts constructively, the school’s policy is clear about bullying—repeated behaviour that is hurtful, threatening or frightening, whether it is physical, verbal or social behaviour is unacceptable, and will not be tolerated. In the first instance the anti-bullying policy aims to support and assist students to stop any bullying behaviour, but if the behaviour repeats, or appears habitual, increasingly serious consequences will occur. Full details of the policy can be found on page 10 of the Student Diary.

During the coming weeks Mentors will be paying particular attention to this policy to raise the awareness of students. They will be focusing on educating the boys about what bullying is, common misconceptions, and what they can do to stop bullying. One of the key influencers of bullying behaviour in a community is the attitude and actions of by-standers. Students who bully, and their victims, interpret by-stander inaction as permission and support of the bullying behaviour. Please take the opportunity to explore this issue with your son over the coming weeks.

Schools are reporting the increased use of ICT (mobile phone, MSN, blogs, Facebook, etc) as a bullying tool. It is useful to discuss this medium with your son to ensure he understands that normal standards of interpersonal behaviour apply to these forms of communication.

The school can only intervene in bullying when staff becomes aware of a problem. Often this is only occurs once the problem causes significant distress. If your son is not happy about how he is being treated by his peers at school, please encourage him to talk to his Mentor. Other staff boys could report bullying to include: class teacher, School Counsellor, Heads of House, Heads of Year and Heads of School. Our welfare email address is another option welfare@newingtoncollege.nsw.au. Parents should contact their son’s Mentor if they have any concerns. Past student surveys show that at Newington reporting bullying to staff results in very high levels of success in solving the problem.

The vast majority of Newington boys experience a bullying and harassment free school environment. We are committed to aiming for every boy to have this experience. Please encourage your sons to speak up if they see or experience bullying at school.

House Competition Day

Held on the final day of Term 2 House Competition experienced a new format with all House Teams consisting of at least two boys from each Year Group ie 2 from Year 7, 2 from Year 8 etc. The Year 12 boys organised and ran each team. The outcome was one of the best House Competition Days ever. The older boys embraced the leadership opportunity and the concept of all boys of different ages having maximum participation. The events held were softball, volleyball and four court tennis. In a see-sawing day Manton gained the lead in the last session while Fletcher and Moulton finished equal second. Congratulations to all boys and the organisers Mr Mountain and Mr Pyne.

Senior School

Driver Education

As part of our ongoing pastoral program the information as below outlines the support offered to our students in the weeks ahead.

Year 12

As an increasing number of senior students gain their P Plates parents may like to consider how they can further develop their son’s driving skills. One such program to consider is the Driver Safety Program as found on the link that follows http://www.sydneymotorsportpark.com.au/experience/detail/driver-training/11

Year 11

On Tuesday 18 September Year 11 will be attending a driver safety day (RYDA ) at Homebush. More information will be available in the near future. You may wish to go to their website at http://www.ryda.org.au/

Year 10

All Year 10 will attend the Youth and Road Trauma Forum on Thursday 23 August. Their link is www.bstreetsmart.org/index.php

Paul Bourke
Head of Senior School