Not realising how impacting the issue of international students would be, it seems that this is a largely untapped area. Unsurprisingly, as Education appears as a high commodity in Australia’s Budget, through the handling of Students our nation has boundless incentives to be hands-on(😯?). Similar to the frequent defence of ‘no harm intended’, the amounts of information + reasons for foreign speaking Families of suspected CSA surviving Children + Students is quite astounding!
From Victorian Education Dept’s Risk Assessment Template for International Students, the Events or Environments of Highest risk are:
- Homestay host is not clear on Child Safe requirements and mandatory reporting procedure;
- Parent of International student not clear on how to report child abuse;
This is where BBC has performed well, as to the the first item – mandatory reporting procedure. Discussions had with the PMSA confirm this, in-addition to easily viewing + Sharing copies of the related PMSA Historical Abuse Redress Policy (PDF). What does cause concern is the ongoing leaps in statistics of BBC’s previous, current and potential enrolments. This is where the second listed ‘Highest risk’ appears, in the items above. Even through discussions with BBC ‘Old Boys’ experiences in foreign countries, it appears that even reported Australian CSA occurrences are not included with other Education systems. This could be compounded in ESL predicaments, as demonstrated by particular interest in views from non-English countries.
Of greatest concern, is those Students + their Families who ‘fall between the gaps’. Through providing our factual evidence, our RCbbc Shares the following link to the International Baccalaureate’s ‘Discussing child protection in international schools’ (http://blogs.ibo.org/blog/2016/04/14/discussing-child-protection-in-international-schools/). Of particular notes is that the key topics of:
- Educating educators (including International Police Cert.)
- Lifting the lid
- More work needs to be done
Closing off with the Author’s for IB Schools + protecting children:
Larsson’s advice for IB World Schools
- Research the resources available
- Attend training
- Invite experts into your communities
To protect children:
- Listen to them
- Support them
- Believe them
- Find an expert to immediately investigate – it can be damaging to a child to have them repeat a story over and over again to someone who isn’t trained to do the interview.
- International Baccalaureate’s ‘Discussing child protection in international schools’ (http://blogs.ibo.org/blog/2016/04/14/discussing-child-protection-in-international-schools/).
- Victoria Education and Training. Risk Management (https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/principals/spag/governance/Pages/risk.aspx).