Child Safety at Blue Gum
At Blue Gum Community School, keeping children safe underpins everything we do. As a small school, we know our people, our families and our students — there are no hidden moments. The safety, welfare and wellbeing of every child is our paramount consideration in every decision we make, and this sits at the centre of our leadership, governance and culture. We listen to children and take their voices seriously in the decisions that affect them.

Our commitments include:

• Compliance with the NSW Child Safe Standards
• Child Safe Recruitment Practices for all staff and volunteers
• All staff and volunteers hold valid, verified Working With Children Checks
• All staff have completed National Child Safety Training (2026)
• All staff complete annual Child Protection Refresher Training
• A clear Code of Conduct governing all staff interactions with students
• Whenever our preschool is open, a designated Responsible Person with specialist Child Protection training is on site
• Two educators always present with our preschool group
• A staff-to-child ratio of 1:8, exceeding the state-mandated 1:10
• All staff are mandatory reporters, with any concern raised directly to the Principal

We keep families informed and involved in child safety, respect the diverse needs of every child and family in our community, and ensure everyone working with our students is suitable, well-supported, and equipped to put these values into daily practice. Just as importantly, we listen — genuinely — to our children, so they feel safe, heard and confident that their voice leads to real action, not just a response.

Every space and moment of the day — indoors, outdoors, and during transitions — is actively and thoughtfully supervised, with clear plans in place so children are always within sight or hearing of a known educator, including additional safeguards for personal care routines that protect each child's dignity and safety.

Our commitment extends to the digital world too: children have the right to say no to being photographed or recorded, only service-approved devices are used to capture or share any image or information about them, and all technology use is intentional, supervised and never a substitute for real connection.

This applies across all of Blue Gum's Early Childhood Service offerings — our long day 3–5 year old preschool, and our BGOSH programs (Blue Gum Outside School Hours — incorporating Before School Care, After School Care, and School Holiday Programs).

Blue Gum Distinctives
What we believe about children, learning, and the purpose of education guides our choices every day. These beliefs shape how we interact with and support children at Blue Gum. This document explains why we are what we are, why we do what we do, and how we do it.

A uniquely Australian place of learning

Blue Gum Community School offers a uniquely Australian place of learning by:

• studying and reflecting on international best practice from the perspective of Australian society;
• creating a physical and educational environment that mirrors Australian society and our specific school community;
• valuing our Australian heritage and identity — Indigenous culture and history, welcoming people of all backgrounds,
• giving everyone a "fair go," and treating the outdoors as a place to live, learn, and meet others.

Within this context, we aim for learning that is inspiring, challenging, interactive, reflective, evolving, and sustainable; that offers negotiated, collaborative choices; that values diversity and difference; that lets each student explore their place in the wider community; and that treats every student as Competent, Capable, Creative, Responsible, Resourceful, and Resilient.

Inspiring, evolving learning environments

We treat the environment as a third teacher, and provide it as such by:

• curating an aesthetic, multi-sensory physical environment, indoors and outdoors;
• offering daily a range of open-ended, multi-level activities for students to explore and research;
• inviting students, educators, and parents to contribute ideas and artefacts, working alongside each other as co-learners;
• posing questions and inviting students and educators to hypothesise, then test their ideas together;
• continually seeking new ways to respond to real situations, treating best practice as a journey rather than a destination;
• reconnecting students with the broader community — different generations and cultures — through shared experiences.
• Negotiated, collaborative learning choices

We offer this by:

• giving students a range of learning options, inviting them to contribute their own, and negotiating a choice that satisfies their interest, their peers' interests, and an educator's judgement;
• shifting students' focus from educators as the main reference point toward peers and the wider community as co-constructors of knowledge;
• encouraging small-group work, where students can initiate, negotiate, and collaborate in ways that are both satisfying and empowering.

Valuing diversity and difference

We do this by welcoming a mix of ages, abilities, and backgrounds among students, educators, and families in each class; offering multi-level learning choices; staffing each class with a team of educators; using vertical age groupings and co-education; including students with disabilities wherever possible; and encouraging students to try different ways of thinking, doing, and being.

In all of this, we're intentional about practices that help students flourish through a research-based curriculum that supports deep learning, understanding, and multiple perspectives — within an environment built on access, equity, and participation.

A place in the wider community

Childhood isn't preparation for life — it is life. We stay alert to authentic opportunities for students to engage deeply, and over extended periods, with different aspects of living, different roles, and different agencies in the community.

Competent, Capable, Creative, Responsible, Resourceful, Resilient

• Competent — There's so much students can already do. We hold high expectations for their engagement and agency, inviting them daily to solve real problems with real tools in an environment that's empowering, challenging, and enticing.
• Capable — Students regularly make decisions that affect their lives, co-designing the program with us and helping build the culture and relationships that make us who we are. Both students and adults have agency to initiate, plan, weigh options, and shape what happens around them.
• Creative — Creativity and imagination are essential to being human. We expect students to generate new ideas and forms of expression, never limited to copying others', using a wide range of media to deepen their understanding.
• Responsible — We help children see how their responses can build relationships and move things forward, even when plans don't work out. We expect them to accept the consequences of their decisions, and we lean into disruptions and difficult situations as opportunities for growth.
• Resourceful — Students contribute to the program: exploring lines of inquiry, solving problems, and designing and testing solutions. We encourage them to be resourceful with our materials and to use and reuse them sustainably and respectfully.
• Resilient — Students can bounce back. We want them to handle life's ups and downs, build coping skills for the inevitable uncertainties, and persevere — an ability we see as essential to living wholeheartedly and in community.

Partnering with Parents
At Blue Gum Community School, we believe education thrives when families and school work as true partners. We welcome parents not as visitors, but as valued members of our learning community — invited to lean in, get involved, and share in the life of the school.

Regular, open communication keeps that partnership strong, so families always know what's happening and why. Daily Preschool Postcards offer a snapshot of each day, while the Weekly Preschool Program is always on hand for families to see what's coming up. Teachers also share regular bulletins — The Preschool Post — capturing the life and learning happening at the time.

Each term, we bring learning to life through community events that connect all age groups — moments where the whole school community comes together to see, celebrate, and take part in what our children are discovering.

Our Family Garden Club and termly working bees — both voluntary — are among our most treasured community moments — times when children, parents and teachers work side by side, hands in the soil, growing something together. These gatherings reflect our commitment to place-based education: learning that is rooted in our own land, grown through real relationship with it, and strengthened by the people who tend it alongside us.

Health and Nutrition
At Blue Gum, we understand that healthy habits formed in the early years last a lifetime. As the Early Years Learning Framework (V2.0) reminds us, learning about healthy lifestyles — including nutrition, sleep and rest, personal hygiene, physical fitness, emotions and social relationships — is integral to children's wellbeing and self-confidence. Good nutrition supports children's concentration, energy and capacity to engage fully in their learning each day.

We work in partnership with families to provide nutritious food, model healthy eating, and support children's growing independence around food choices. 

Daily Rhythm: Meals and Peacetime
We provide a healthy morning and afternoon tea, while children bring their own packed lunch from home, giving families the chance to cater to their child's individual tastes and needs.

Just as importantly, we build rest and relaxation into our daily rhythm. At Blue Gum, this is known as **Peacetime** — a quiet period after lunch where children can rest, relax or sleep, depending on their age and individual needs. Some children choose to lie down on their own mat and towel, others enjoy a picture book or quiet play, and some drift off to sleep. Lighting, music and temperature are gently adjusted to help children settle and self-regulate, and any child who falls asleep is woken gradually and gently afterwards.

Hand Washing
Good hand hygiene is one of the simplest ways we protect children from illness. At Blue Gum, children wash their hands at key points throughout the day — on arrival, before and after eating, after the toilet, and after outdoor play — and educators role-model and supervise this routine.

Sun Safety
Blue Gum follows Cancer Council NSW SunSmart guidelines to protect children from UV exposure. Children wear a broad-brimmed Blue Gum hat and sun-safe clothing, and SPF50+ sunscreen is applied before outdoor play whenever UV levels reach 3 or above. Shade is used and outdoor activities are timed to reduce sun exposure where possible.

First Aid
All Blue Gum educators hold current First Aid, asthma and anaphylaxis training, and fully stocked first aid kits are maintained on site. Should an accident, injury or illness occur, staff assess and respond according to clear priority levels, and families are kept informed. 

Curious, Connected, Committed

Meet our team — a group of skilled, passionate people with different strengths and experiences, united by a love of learning and a love of children. Many of our staff are university-qualified, experienced teachers. All bring quality and care to their work every day.

Our teachers are curious, engaged and present — they love learning and are fascinated by the world. They work to make visible the sophistication and significance of children's thinking and theorising, and to support children to go deeper with their learning and to persevere when things get tough.

We work in close collaboration and genuinely value teamwork. What we expect of our children, we expect of ourselves: to think with others, to listen, to connect, to be willing to have a go and take risks. Teaching, to us, is an honour and an art — and we bring our whole selves to it. Joy and meaning are at the heart of all we do.