Working together

Pine Rivers Special School , Pine Rivers , Brisbane

Curriculum: Personal Development and Health and Physical Education

Our staff wanted to increase skills that would enable us to provide relevant sexuality information to our kids. We wanted a team approach that could provide the students with the skills to protect themselves. Our kids have high support needs and we require an approach that caters to their diverse and complex needs. Family Planning Queensland provided support to staff with parent education. They came and helped our staff with professional development, program planning and team teaching as well as policy writing, modelling, and observation.

Our school

Pine Rivers Special School has nearly 100 school age students and 61 children from birth to five years of age enrolled at the Early Childhood Development Unit. The students have a variety of learning needs and disabilities including Intellectual Impairments, Hearing Impairments and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Pine Rivers Special School promotes a safe and accepting learning environment. Learning outcomes that enhance life long development are identified in the School’s Curriculum Framework and embedded in the teaching concepts, pedagogy and assessment. Pine Rivers Special School acknowledges the role that schools, parents and the community undertake in shaping social values and outcomes for all students as a part of their overall learning outcomes.

Our approach to sexuality and relationships education

A sexuality education program is being developed at our school and staff are being identified for the delivery of the education. The school is using Family Planning Queensland ’s (FPQ’s) teaching resource Everybody needs to know , as it has been written with students with a disability in mind. Prior to the school purchasing the teaching resource only informal discussions regarding sexuality were held and limited information was delivered as necessary or when questions arose from students.

Our outcomes

We think our school has avoided issues with teachers because we consulted with our administration, made explicit links to school curriculum and held consultations with teachers which we believe has resulted in ‘ownership’ by staff. We had a trial period for teachers to implement and give feedback and review. Our program has a reporting framework, and an expectation from administration that teachers show evidence of implementation in planning.

The school has involved parents and carers from the beginning by holding parent information sessions and communicating with parents throughout the design process. All of the program resources have been made available and we encourage parent feedback.

Our teachers are reporting that they feel confident teaching a range of sexuality topics including talking about bodies and being private, relationships and being safe with students. Teachers are reporting that they are familiar with a range of resources to teach sexuality education topics. Many talk about using the Traffic lights framework to identify age appropriate sexual behaviours and those, which are concerning or abusive. Staff reported feeling more confident discussing issues about concerning sexual behaviours with colleagues and supervisors. Teachers also reported that they felt a lot more confident in having conversations with other teachers, parents and students, as well as administration staff regarding sexuality.

We believe that by engaging all stakeholders in the nature of our project and providing them with education about sexuality it has enabled a dialogue to begin between members of the whole school community.