Community Forms and Information

Twizel Area School is committed to providing a safe and healthy environment for students, staff, and visitors. 

Our Code of Conduct serves as a reminder to all parents, caregivers, and school visitors that their conduct must support everyone’s emotional and physical well-being, and not harm it in any way. The school’s board has set this Code of Conduct as a condition of entry. 

The Code of Conduct applies:

• to all conduct, speech, and action, and includes emails, texts, phone calls, social media, or other communication
• while on school grounds or at another venue where students and/or staff are assembled for school purposes (such as a camp or sports match).

Standards of Conduct
Twizel Area School expects parents, caregivers, and visitors to:

• treat everyone with respect
• work together in partnership with staff for the benefit of students
• respect and adhere to our school values
• set a good example for students at all times
• follow school procedures to handle any complaints
• adhere to school policies and procedures (such as those listed below), and any legal requirements.

Examples of unsuitable conduct include:

• threats, bullying, harassment
• profanity/offensive language
• insulting, abusing, or intimidating behaviour
• racism or discrimination (e.g. based on ethnicity, religion)
• physical aggression
• deception/fraud
• damaging school property
• smoking/vaping or possessing or using alcohol/drugs/other harmful substances on school premises or at another venue where students and/or staff are assembled for school purposes (except possession or use of alcohol strictly in accordance with Twizel Area School policy)
• placing unreasonable and excessive expectations on staff time or resources
• pursuing a complaint or campaign, or making defamatory, offensive, or derogatory comments, regarding the school, its board, or any staff or students on social media or other public forums
• wearing gang insignia on the school grounds. (This is not allowed under the Prohibition of Gang Insignia legislation, and anyone wearing it will be asked to leave). 

Further Information | Supporting policies and procedures
For our full school policy, see Community Conduct Expectations on SchoolDocs; username twizel, password twizelarea

SchoolDocs →

Twizel Area School understands the benefits of using social media; however, if misused the school community can be negatively affected. This can include individual students, staff, classes of students, or, indeed, the reputation of the school itself.

Purpose of the Twizel Area School Social Media Accounts
Twizel Area School uses social media channels to post information about past and upcoming events, to celebrate student and staff achievements and to provide information for our community.

We welcome your feedback and ask you to be respectful in your comments and your opinion of others' comments.

Removing Comments or Banning Users
Any comments or posts that breach these guidelines will be removed. If a user violates these guidelines, that user may be temporarily or permanently blocked from posting in the future.

Twizel Area School reserves the right to:

• determine what constitutes inappropriate content
• edit or entirely remove inappropriate content
• ban users from its social media communities.

We may delete posts which contain:

• racist, sexist, homophobic or other forms of hate-speech
• potentially defamatory statements
• confidential information (including personal contact details and information regarding individual students or staff members, both past and present)
• misinformation
• spam or advertising
• offensive language, abuse or threats
• off-topic or irrelevant information to the thread of conversation
• nudity, pornography or child abuse
• political statements or lobbying
• excessive violence
• content that is illegal, gives instructions for illegal activity or advocates illegal activities.

Monitoring Outside of School Hours
Our Social Media pages are monitored outside of school hours, however if you need to contact us during this time, please use the contact information on the Twizel Area School website. Teachers and other staff members should not be contacted outside of school hours, this includes through their personal social media; e.g. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.

Legal Framework
These guidelines have due regard to statutory legislation, including, but not limited to the following:

Privacy Act 2020

Defamation Act 1992

Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015

Harmful Digital Communications Rules 2016

Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007