An education academic has argued that Adrian Piccoli “needed to go” from the NSW education portfolio, following newly minted premier Gladys Berejiklian’s cabinet reshuffle. Piccoli, a NSW Nationals MP, was replaced with Rob Stokes, who previously sat in the planning ...
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Kids a priority for lobby against alcohol abuse
“Nothing good happens after midnight.” Michael Thorn, chief executive of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), drops this aphorism in a conversation about lockout laws. The erosion of lockout laws, and how it affects the wellbeing of children, ...
More »Private school costs skyrocket by 64 per cent
The parents of children born in 2017 may have to fork out $487,083 to put their child through K to 12 private schooling. This is the estimated national average bill for a private education by the latest iteration of the ...
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 »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 »Few schools properly teach advanced maths: AMSI
Less than 7 per cent of schools in Australia are “fully able to give kids the best education in maths” at the advanced level, the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute has estimated. AMSI director Geoff Prince made these comments to Education ...
More »Birmingham to use TIMSS report to spruik reform
Federal education minister Simon Birmingham plans to use Australia's poor performance in the recent Trends In International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) to spruik the necessity of the government’s reforms to the states and territories. “When I sit down with my state ...
More »Learning with moral authority: lessons from Lewis Carroll
Praxis education is what the world needs to create an environment where schooling serves the individual and public good. Serious debate regarding education in Australia, and indeed around the world, has been at a frustratingly low level for some time. ...
More »Teen tech whiz says career advice should focus on aspirations, not jobs
Taj Pabari is a 17-year-old high school student attending Brisbane’s John Paul College who has absolutely no aspiration to study at university. But he’s also chief executive of his own tech start-up, Fiftysix Creations, and spends his free time with ...
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