[Text on screen reads, ‘We recognise the Ongoing Custodians of the land and waterways where we work and live. We pay respect to Elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories. We strive to ensure every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in NSW achieve their potential through education.’]

Chloe Barrett – Teacher (Year Advisor), Orange High School

Our school's RRE journey is significant because we are one huge team and no one's ever alone in this journey. And we all feel really well supported by all of the people that are around us. We have each other's backs when we might not know something or know how to deal with a situation. We are always there to support our students, but it's always a process where you feel like you're never alone and there's always more to learn.

Ali McLennan – Principal, Orange High School

We have just under a thousand students, we have 14% of students who are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and we also have around 80 students who are from an EAL/D background. We have 7 support and inclusion classes here at the school as well as 2 out at the hospital.

Sally Cheetham – Deputy Principal, Inclusion and Support, Orange High School

For us in Orange, we have found and been told multiple times by our community leaders that domestic violence is a huge problem. And so it's definitely an area that impacts not only our community, it impacts our students, it impacts our families and it also impacts our staff. And so for us to be able to address that, we need to implement specific programs, explicit programs that really do talk about Respectful Relationships Education.

Ali

We look at Sentral data, we do a lot of anecdotal monitoring through our executive team. We teach wellbeing lessons to all of our students in Years 7 to 10. And it's a really great way for year advisors to get a gauge on what those experiences are for our students. So I think it's a whole school inclusive process where we get a lot of data and then reflect against the public school survey.

Kerrie Chopping – Head Teacher Wellbeing, Orange High School

There's an opportunity with staff to work collaboratively and draw on strengths and share their knowledge and their skills, almost modelling. So if there's a situation that a staff member hasn't been involved with, I would help model what needs to happen, show the process, walk beside them, help make the phone calls, liaise with our services that we work really closely with all the time.

[Screen shows teachers collaborating and planning Respectful Relationships Education implementation.]

Minh Doan – Youth Outreach Worker, Orange High School

I'm excited about a whole lot of things. How do we as a school engage with our students, asking for their feedback? How they would like the RRE curriculum or the resources to be rolled out? And then also thinking about how they learn best, building respectful and also professional relationships within the schools to work with them to meet where they're at. So everything that I do as a student support officer stems back to how am I nurturing and fostering these young people to become active global citizens that have respectful relationships that also regulate their emotion.

Eliza – Student, Orange High School

So students like get their say in these kinds of things about like the respectful relationships and how they're taught by like just asking the teacher, because the teachers here value our say a lot.

Iba – Student, Orange High School

If I were to tell a new student why respectful relationships matter at this school, I'd tell them it's because it makes our school a safe environment where everyone can make friends and feel like they belong and connect with people and feel safe.

Angus – Student, Orange High School

Advice I would give to teachers in respectful relationships is like trying to form that connection between each other, going the extra mile just to get to know you better, how you learn and what you like to do.

Sophie Fardell – Teacher (Year Advisor), Orange High School

What I find rewarding about delivering an RRE program is the fact that I think it's such a powerful tool and a powerful educational aspect. Us as educators have the ability to be at the forefront with young adolescent children that need this education, that need us to model and show and deliver content that is very relevant to our community and our culture at the moment.

[Screen shows a teacher interacting with students in a classroom.]

Ali

The support the RRE team has provided has allowed us to build our resources and build our staff's competence and capacity and confidence, most importantly, in delivering the RRE ideals and values. And they've given us great support in understanding and learning much more about the policies linked to RRE and how we can fully support our understanding with our students to have an inclusive environment that fully encompasses RRE. So the professional learning has been incredible and all the resources that have been supplied.

The most significant change I've noticed is the common language used by teachers and students about Respectful Relationships Education, and the strategic approach to embedding it in KLAs across the school has had a very significant impact in our planning and our strategic directions.

[End of transcript]

[Text on screen reads, ‘We recognise the Ongoing Custodians of the land and waterways where we work and live. We pay respect to Elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories. We strive to ensure every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in NSW achieve their potential through education.’]

Mia Kumar – Principal, Burwood Girls High School

Burwood Girls High School is a school just under 1,100 students. It's an inner-city school. Our population is very diverse. There are about 62 different languages spoken at the school, and that gives it a richness which we appreciate very much and we actually celebrate whenever we can. It's very important to discuss our commitment to Respectful Relationships Education to all of our stakeholders, to students, to parents, and to staff.

We have developed a culture at the school where there's an expectation to be involved, to work with each other, and understand what are the issues that we need to work harder at, and I think if we can do that successfully, then we can have everyone on board to make a better school for all.

Kathy Lye – Deputy Principal, Burwood Girls High School

Well, I think at our school we aim to develop a culture of empathy, of equality, and positive communication.

At the end of the day, we want to do our best by our students. We want to ensure that we teach them to navigate some very complex situations or social situations that young people find themselves in at the moment. We also want to challenge stereotypes that sometimes are responsible for those behaviours, and we want to teach our students how to communicate effectively.

We also recognise that the skills from respectful relationships directly impact academic engagement from our students and also their mental health.

Tara Credlin - PDHPE teacher, Burwood Girls High School

Leaders provide the school with school-wide policies that help establish those respectful relationships within the school and ensure that students abide by them, but also understand them, and we also keep those policies up to date, especially with respectful relationships, and mental health, and all the changes that are occurring in society.

Voulla Kalogeropoulos – Head Teacher Wellbeing, Burwood Girls High School

We also have a very strong wellbeing team. So, our team consists of our senior executive, our school counsellors, our year advisors, our community liaison officers. We take in our parents' point of view as well. We have focus groups here at school. So, at the beginning of every year the team gets together and we plan specifically for each year group, looking at the data that we've got.

[Screen shows teachers collaborating using the Strength Assessment Tool.]

Tara

So collaboration is really important across both staff and students. In the delivery of RRE, I know us as teachers, we collaborate together to create resources and programs for the students, and we're all in that open discussion when we offer ideas and strategies to ensure that that respectful, inclusive and safe environment is maintained in the lessons.

[Screen shows teachers collaborating, focusing on the 6 priority areas of RRE.]

Charlize – Student, Burwood Girls High School

I think we talk about a wide variety of respectful relationships within our school. For me, one thing that really helps with lessons in respectful relationships is definitely the hands-on environment and, like, the activities where it's based on real-life scenarios, and kind of put yourself into someone else's shoes and integrate a perspective of empathy within respectful relationships.

Stella – Student, Burwood Girls High School

I think during RRE lessons, one of the most important things to learn about is conflict resolution, because we learn so much about what respectful relationships look like and what disrespectful relationships look like, but I think it's incredibly important for teachers to be teaching students about how to resolve this conflict.

Beatrix – Student, Burwood Girls High School

At our school, the kind of clubs, programs and groups that we run, they all kind of relate back to inclusion and respectful relationships, because we have a real culture of inclusion and diversity, and that's really prevalent in the things we do. Something that's also really important is our True Colours group, and that's centred around making LGBTQIA youth feel really included, and we really love to celebrate, I guess, our differences, which is really important to us.

Stella

Burwood is a very good school at including everyone and making sure everyone's voices are heard, and one of the main ways that I've noticed that this has happened all throughout my high school career is teachers are very attentive in the classroom, and they really make sure to check in with students and listen to what they need.

Kathy

We already look at RRE in terms of PDHPE, but having those explicit teaching strategies has given the staff more confidence to be able to deliver and have the language to use, particularly when looking at those controversial issues that they need to deliver in RRE education. RRE is a framework to work around and to be able to use that continuous cycle of improvement to look for things that we can change, the things that we can add, the things that we can do better.

We have changed the way we think about everything we're doing. So, in terms of looking at what we're going to do straight away, I'm putting it on, I'm going RRE framework, and it's not just another strategy we're doing. It's linking to everything we do. It's a holistic approach. It's, it's everything.

[Screen shows leaders collaborating using the School Excellence Framework and the Strength Assessment Tool.]

[End of transcript]