Child Safety & Protection

The protection of children and young persons is the responsibility of everyone who works at St John’s College including its Board, Leadership, staff, contractors, parents and volunteers. We all share responsibility for promoting the wellbeing and safety of children.

St John’s College has zero tolerance for child abuse and is committed to acting in the best interests of children and to keeping them safe at all times. At St John’s College;

  • We want students to be safe, happy and empowered.
  • We are committed to the safety, participation and empowerment of all students.
  • We have zero tolerance of child abuse, and all allegations and safety concerns will be treated very seriously and consistently with our robust policies and procedures.
  • We have spiritual, ethical, legal and moral obligations to contact authorities when we are worried about a child’s safety, which we follow rigorously.
  • We are committed to preventing child abuse and identifying risks early, and removing and reducing these risks.

Ministerial Order 1359 and New Victorian Child Safe Standards

At St John’s College we are updating our Child Safe/Safeguarding policies and programs to comply with Ministerial Order 1359. Compliance with Ministerial Order 1359 will be a registration requirement for all Victorian schools from 1 July 2022.

All child-related organisations in Victoria, including schools, are also expected to comply with the new Victorian Child Safe Standards (Child Safe Standards) from 1 July 2022, and Ministerial Order 1359 sets out how the Child Safe Standards apply in school environments.

Ministerial Order 1359 greatly expands the policies, procedures, other documentation and practices that a school’s “school governing authority” must develop, endorse and implement and, if it is a boarding school, for its boarding premises. It also includes important changes to definitions which will affect several areas of a school/school boarding premises, but particularly human resource practices.

Our new child safety commitment statement will be updated to reflect the change:
St John’s College takes a zero-tolerance approach to child abuse and is fully committed to ensuring that its strategies, policies, procedures, and practices meet all Child Safety Standards as specified in Ministerial Order No. 1359 (2022).