In my email inbox today I found two articles side by side, both from the US endorsing what can only be considered to be contradictory strategies for investing in teacher quality. The first written by Bill Gates for the Washington ...
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First Announcement of the 2011 Australian College of Educators National Conference
The aim of this conference is to give fresh consideration to equity in the current Australian education context. Its purpose will be to contribute to a robust equity framework for Australian education that can connect government, schools and communities. The ...
More »Ensure you are informed
Every school in Australia will receive a USB stick loaded with a copy of the National Professional Standards for Teachers and the National Professional Standard for Principals. The USB has been developed by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School ...
More »Benchmarking Teacher Quality in Australia with the New Standards
The teaching profession has long fought for a stronger public standing alongside other professionals such as doctors, accountants, lawyers and engineers. For the first time we have a national set of Standards which every state and territory has agreed to ...
More »Ministers endorse Australian curriculum
It’s official. On 8 December last year, as schools across the country were getting ready to close the books on another year, state and territory education ministers gathered in Canberra where, with federal Education Minister Peter Garrett, they endorsed the ...
More »Falling behind and falling apart – life at the bottom of the heap in the lucky country.
I pinched part of the title for this article from a book by Oxford economics professor, Paul Collier. The book “The Bottom Billion - why the poorest countries are falling apart and what can be done about it” makes the ...
More »Ask a silly question
Sorting through papers I’d collected in 2010, I came across one headed ‘Are autonomous schools the answer’. On it I had pencilled ‘To what?’ The article had clearly left me feeling I was being asked to contemplate not only ‘an’ ...
More »Road-testing the new National Professional Standard for Principals
School leadership is recognised as a vital factor in improving school effectiveness and student achievement. All teachers exercise leadership although as teachers become more experienced and adept it is likely that their leadership involvement and influence will increase beyond the ...
More »A private practice
Don’t look now, but there’s a giant elephant in the room. Private tuition, or the ‘shadow education system’, is estimated to be a $1 billion industry in Australia. The industry’s self regulatory body, the Australian Tutoring Association (ATA), suggests there ...
More »AITSL to develop and deliver a flagship program in support of the Australian Curriculum
The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) will be implementing a national flagship professional learning program next year in support of the Australian Curriculum. The program will provide high-quality, innovative professional learning to enable lead teachers and, where ...
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