Welcome to Week Eight of Term 4. As we get closer to our end of year, please consider signing up to the Department’s QParents App.  QParents is a user-friendly portal accessible via app or web browser, providing parents with secure online access to information about their child’s schooling. This app has many features including your ability to access your child/children’s report cards at any time after they have been distributed.  Next year we are looking at using QParents to manage website permissions from parents for students to be able to access educational websites that our school would like to use.  Please see our administration staff if you would like some assistance in signing up to the QParents so that you can access information easily.

A Factsheet about QParents is included in this newsletter.

Each week I focus on an aspect of Calliope’s Student Code of Conduct.  This week the focus highlights the conclusion of our Student Code of Conduct which contains the Department’s Complaint’s process.

Conclusion

Calliope State School staff are committed to ensuring every student is supported to feel safe, welcome and valued in our school.  There may; however, be occasions where parents need to raise a concern or make a complaint about an issue you feel is adversely affecting your child's education.

 All Queensland state schools are committed to ensuring that all complaints - whether they relate to a school staff member or a school's operations - are dealt with in a fair and equitable manner.  As a parent or carer, you can express dissatisfaction with the service or action of the Department of Education or its staff, including decisions made or actions taken in a school and/or by the local regional office.

 As a complainant, it is your responsibility to:

• give us a clear idea of the issue or concern and your desired solution;
• provide all the relevant information when making the complaint;
• understand that addressing a complaint can take time;
• cooperate respectfully and understand that unreasonable, abusive, or disrespectful conduct will not be tolerated;
• let us know if something changes, including if help is no longer needed.

 The Department of Education may not proceed with your complaint if your conduct is unreasonable.

 In most instances, staff members are told of complaints made about them and offered the right of reply.  A complainant also has the right to have a support person throughout the process.

 The following three-step approach assists parents and school staff in reaching an outcome that is in the best interests of the student:

1. Early resolution: discuss your complaint with the school

The best place to raise any concerns is at the point where the problem or issue arose.  You can make an appointment at the school to discuss your complaint with your child’s teacher or the principal.  You are also welcome to lodge your complaint in writing or over the phone.  You can also make a complaint through QGov.

 Complaints may be lodged by telephone, writing or in electronic format. Email addresses can be accessed through the schools directory.

     2.Internal review: contact the local Regional Office

If, after taking the early resolution step, you are dissatisfied with the outcome of your complaint or how the complaint was handled, you can ask the local regional office to conduct a review.  You need to submit a Request for internal review form within 28 days of receiving the complaint outcome.

3. External review: contact a review authority

If you are dissatisfied after the internal review, you may wish to contact a review authority, such as the Queensland Ombudsman, and request an independent, external review.  More information about external review options is available at www.ombudsman.qld.gov.au.

 Some matters need to be handled in a different way to school matters and will be referred to other areas in the department.  These include:

• issues about harm, or risk of harm, to a student attending a state school, which must be managed in accordance with the Student protection procedure;
  • complaints about corrupt conduct, public interest disclosures; or certain decisions made under legislation, which will be dealt with as outlined in the Excluded complaints factsheet.

Christmas Cards

Students are welcome to start sending Christmas cards to their friends from this week, Monday 27 November.  Students post their Christmas cards at the office using the Christmas Post Box. Please ensure the  recipient (student’s name) and class are on the front of the envelope. Our Year 6 students collect, sort and deliver the mail. Candy canes or food items are not to be put into any Christmas cards.

Congratulations to 2D who had an amazing attendance rate for Week 7. Their attendance rate was 95.78% for the week!

Also, congratulations to the 2 classes that were at or above our school attendance target of 94% for Week 6.

Remember, every day you are away is a learning day lost.

Hi everyone! Although it feels like the school year is all but over, we still have a few important dates ahead on the calendar.

2024 Senior shirt orders must be submitted (via QKR) by COB today, Wednesday November 22^nd! We don’t want anyone missing out and this is a one time only order due to the hefty shipping costs.

Are you attending one of the Prep open afternoons? Or know someone who is? Our uniform shop volunteers will be there with uniforms for your Preppie-to-be to try on and for purchases.

We will be opening the Uniform shop for some extended hours leading into school starting next year. Keep an eye on the newsletters and Facebook page for dates and times once we have confirmed these with our wonderful volunteers.

Tuckshop days for Week 10 will be Tuesday and Wednesday only. The Tuckshop will not be open for Break up and clean up days. Please ensure your child knows they have a tuckshop order to collect on any given day. There are students not collecting their orders during lunch breaks. Active and engaged learners need full bellies!

Did you know that by shopping at Office National Gladstone for your booklist supplies, you will be also supporting the P&C? Office National is a locally owned business, has super competitive prices and also delivers your booklist supplies to your home for free when you spend over $50! The more families that purchase their booklist supplies through Office National, the more money they will give directly back to the P&C for the benefit of all our students. You can drop off your booklist in person or email it in. Check out our Facebook page for more details too!

Have you got you tickets in our Christmas raffle yet? Tickets are on sale now and will be drawn at parade in week 9. We would love your support so we can continue supporting all our wonderful students. Check out our Facebook page and the advertisement in this newsletter for all the details. If you wish to support us with some of your spare time (even only a small amount of time helps the team immensely!); please check out the dates that we have booked for pop-up stalls to sell our tickets to the wider community too. If you would like to volunteer please send us an email on the details below.

We are so looking forward to watching our amazing students (and our Teachers Ensemble too) perform at the Calliope Community Christmas Carols on Friday evening!!

For any further information on the details above or any thoughts and ideas, please email us on; communication.calliopess@gmail.com for our Communication Officer or pandc@calliopess.eq.edu.au for our Executive team.

Warm regards,

Heidi, Geoff, Angela and Lisa.

For families who were unable to attend the 2024 Instrumental Music Parent Information Session at CQU on Tuesday, Mr Allen and Rackemann are offering to repeat the session in the Instrumental Music Room next Friday, 24 November) at 2:30PM.  The goal is to cover the concepts quickly, before you start running around with your children for Carols.  If you are unable to make this session also, please contact your IM teacher to arrange another session at a suitable time.

Parents and carers play a vital role in supporting children and young people to establish respectful relationships. Having regular conversations about what positive, healthy and equal relationships look like helps children and young people build self-respect and learn to be respectful to others. Learn more about the role parents, carers and schools play in supporting students to develop respectful relationships on the RRE hub.

QParents 

Calliope State School provides parents with access to a convenient, online parent portal called QParents.

The QParents web and mobile application provides an easier way for you to interact with our school. Parents will have secure, online access to their child's student information, anytime, anywhere, through a smartphone, tablet or computer.

QParents provides secure, online access to student information such as:

• Attendance details

• Report cards

• Student photo

• Consent Form
  
  
• Payment History

The benefits of QParents

Convenience and time savings for parents

• Parents can view or update their child's details and report absences without having to call the school or come into the office.
• Secure 24/7 online access.
• Available anytime, anywhere — access QParents on your smart phone, tablet or computer on a web browser or using the app (iPhone or Android). 

Greater transparency of information

• Improves accountability between parents and schools by providing parents with timely access to their child's information online.
• Allows parents to engage more deeply in their child's schooling.

Improved administration efficiencies for schools

• Allows schools to streamline their administrative processes and cut down on printing.

What do you need to do to get started?

The office will be send out emails inviting parents or guardians to become a QParents Account Owner (QPAO) for their student at the beginning of their enrolment at the school. QPAOs will be able to register for QParents to access and manage the student's information online, view the student's information and submit requests to update some of the student's details.

QPAOs will also be able to invite other people (such as another family member), to view the student's information. Once invited, these people can register for QParents as “delegated viewers". A delegated viewer can see the student's details, but cannot make updates.

When you receive your invitation email, simply follow the instructions to register your QParents account. The process should take less than 10 minutes to complete. Initial registration and addition of students to your account must be done on a desktop or laptop computer. Once registered, you will then be able to access QParents using your mobile device (via web browser or by downloading the iPhone or Android App).

Invitations sent by email will only ever come from no.reply@qparents.qld.edu.au. You will not be invited to register from any other email address or organisation.

If you do no not want to register you can just ignore the invitation and your child's student information will not be available to anyone through QParents.

Identity Verification

To obtain full access to student information, as part of their QParents registration users must complete an identity verification process. QParents offers two options for identity verification – online and offline.

For fully online verification (the fastest option), you will need to verify 100 points of the following identity documents online:

If you cannot verify 100 points of the above ID documents online, you may still register for QParents, but you will need to attend the school to verify documentation in person after you have registered online.

Full instructions on how to verify your documents and what you may need to bring to the school will be provided as part of the invitation and registration process.

If you don't have sufficient documents, or are unsure, you may still be able to register. For more information on the online identity verification process, see https://qparents.qld.edu.au/#/identityInformation .

Please note that QParents does not maintain copies or records of any identity documents used for account verification, either online or offline. 

EQ ID

You will also need to have your child's EQ ID (their Education Queensland identification number) in order to complete your QParents registration. You can access this via the school office.

Safe and secure

QParents is a secure portal that meets strict industry standards. The Department of Education and Training considers student information to be confidential (it is classified as PROTECTED by the Department). Only people with the right to access information about their child will be given an account. Additionally, as part of the registration process, 100 points of identity or equivalent will need to be presented to prove that the person who is registering is the person the school invited.

Further information

https://qed.qld.gov.au/about-us/department-apps/qparents