The work of School Advisory Councils is structured around the MACS Terms of Reference, adapted to local context and seen through the lens of Working Together in Mission.

In keeping with the objects of the Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS) Constitution, the School Advisory Council provides a crucial point of connection between the wider school community and school leaders. The Terms of Reference frames the operation of the School Advisory Council and each council is designed for, and works within, the context of its specific school. As such, School Advisory Councils are a living expression of the principle of subsidiarity in action, representing MACS’ commitment to ensuring that local agency is preserved for school communities as appropriate.

The good work of educating the young, undertaken in the light of the Gospel, is a co-responsible task led by every member of the Catholic school community.
(MACS Statement of Mission)

Each school has the flexibility to adapt a MACS Terms of Reference for School Advisory Councils template to suit its own particular needs. A template has been developed for different contexts:

1. schools in a single parish
2. secondary schools
3. schools belonging to a mission community comprising a family of local faith communities, or whose priest administers multiple parishes.

The Terms of Reference is further supported by the School Advisory Council Manual, which provides a sense of how a School Advisory Council works: its purpose, structures and guiding principles illustrating how its work both fits within the life of each school and supports MACS’ governance role.

Download the template to shape for your school’s context. Designed to provide a MACS school with the structure for its School Advisory Council, the template is to be shaped and contextualised for each school and placed on the school website.

Tailoring the Terms of Reference will support principals, in consultation with the parish priest as custodian of mission, to work through the yellow highlighted guidance notes in the Terms of Reference to determine and co-design the key elements of the School Advisory Council in alignment with the MACS Terms of Reference for School Advisory Councils.