Australia’s largest Islamic school will have its $19 million in annual federal funding cut, following a decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). Explaining the decision, Bernard McCabe, AAT deputy president, said he was not satisfied that Malek Fahd Islamic ...
More »Debate ramps up over phonics instruction
A dispute between experts has emerged on whether Australian schools should adopt the same Year 1 phonics check currently being conducted in the UK. Phonics refers to the relationship between sounds people hear in spoken language and words seen in ...
More »Boosting poor PISA results starts in preschool: ACER
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a standardised literacy, numeracy and science test of 15-year-olds across 72 countries, conducted by the OECD. Yet it doesn’t measure rote learning. Rather, it tests whether kids can apply their knowledge to real-life scenarios. For Aussie students, this task has proved difficult. Like ...
More »Stanford professor says praise effort, but not just for effort’s sake
School’s almost out for summer. Along with the arrival of long days at the beach and snacking on mangoes, this signifies the release of end-of-term results. This year, however, praise for As, or in preschoolers’ case, for their festive crafts, ...
More »Churchill Fellow to explore how sick kids can stay connected to school
When a child gets seriously sick their healthcare takes precedence and, by necessity, their schooling is pushed to the sidelines. This was what Megan Gilmour, a mother from Canberra, saw happen to her son when he battled a two year illness, ...
More »UC enters STEM education research partnership with Samsung
Electronics giant Samsung and the University of Canberra have entered into a research partnership to find out how spatial reasoning can improve STEM education. Spatial reasoning refers to a person’s ability to visualise three-dimensional objects. For example, one uses spatial ...
More »Media sexualisation of children warps 6-year-old minds, advocate says
New research by Curtin University has shown that girls as young as 6 feel the effects of child sexualisation in media. The researchers, led by Dr Michelle Jongenelis from Curtin’s School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, surveyed Australian girls aged ...
More »Teens prefer print over e-books: study
New research shows teenagers still enjoy the age-old practice of sitting down and reading a hard-copy book. The preliminary findings of a study from Deakin University and Murdoch University researchers found that three-quarters of 12- to 16-year-olds prefer to read paper ...
More »Mission Australia calls for national strategy on youth mental health
Mission Australia is calling for a comprehensive strategy for helping young people with mental health issues, following the findings of it latest youth survey. Mission Australia’s Youth Survey 2016 found that 20 per cent of the 22,000 people aged 15 to ...
More »Snapchat joins fight against cyber-bullying
Snapchat, used by teens in schools all over Australia, has joined the Children's eSafety Commissioner’s fight against cyber-bullying. Andree Wright, acting Children's eSafety Commissioner, said Snapchat would now work with the office to remove cyber-bullying material posted on the app. The ...
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