Hello, and welcome to this edition of our CSPA Quarterly

As the new chair, I follow in some big footsteps. Karl Rodrigues has led the CSPA, during a challenging time for all of us, and we thank him for the generosity of both his time and advice.

I’m not an educator, nor a psychologist; I’m a journalist, who has written four books around tweens and teens, and the challenges they face. I also have two teen daughters. One attends a Catholic school; the other lives at a Catholic all-girls university college and I also serve as deputy chair of a Catholic all-boys university college.

There will always be challenges in education, but I think in my lifetime I haven’t seen the confluence of events that has made it so important. How our children learn sets them up of life; but the challenges many of them face along that journey are proving to be enormous. In my most recent research, for a book called L Platers, I asked 1000 girls aged 16, 17 and 18 what they saw as their biggest challenge - and about 700 nominated their mental health. Not all of these attended Catholic schools, but many did. That figure shows the importance of how we, as parents, help them navigate a way forward.

Our engagement in their education is vital. You can help us there, by responding to our Children’s Wellbeing and Learning Survey, which is aimed at providing a catchment for your views in a variety of areas. The survey will be available for completion through our Engage website from 25 July and gives the opportunity for a Catholic school parent voice to be better heard by Government.

One of the many legacies left by COVID is parents’ improved understanding of how education works; in many cases we helped deliver it around the kitchen table. How our schools respond to that is evolving in discussions - and I think the role of parents’ voice there cannot be underestimated. As we move into the second part of this year, the value of our children’s teachers and how we work with our Catholic schools will be instrumental to how our children progress as students, and as young people. We continue to thank our teachers for the important role they take on, daily.

CSPA is committed to ensuring your voice is heard in a myriad of ways, including under a new Commonwealth Government. We will continue to work with our member bodies to provide the requisite leadership to respond to reviews and recommendations, committees and proposals, as they are released. And I personally wish you all the best as we head towards the second half of 2022.

Kind regards,

Madonna King, chair.