Articles

NAPLAN three horse race It isn’t supposed to be a race but if they will release comparison tables the temptation to identify a winner in the NAPLAN results is too great. And it looks like NSW, Victoria and the ACT in a three-horse photo finish.

World leader in education policy, Pasi Sahlberg, joins UNSW and Gonski Institute for Education World-renowned Finnish educator Dr Pasi Sahlberg has been appointed a Professor of Education at UNSW Sydney and will work with the University’s new interdisciplinary institute focussing on educational access and excellence, the Gonski Institute for Education.

UniSA research to identify how schools foster refugee student resilience Often refugees don’t arrive with much but what they do have in spades is resilience; that will form the centerpiece of a Uni SA initiative designed to play to refugee children's strengths.

Australian preschoolers to learn new languages with ELLA in 2018 About 60,000 preschool children in the year before school will use tablet devices to access ELLA to learn one of nine languages next year using a series of seven interactive apps per language. 

Inspirational teachers’ day made better Ten extraordinary primary and secondary school teachers have received a nice surprise with their students, colleagues and community anointing them as the winners of the 2017 A Day Made Better Teaching Awards.

Kids and literacy, get them started young So how do you improve literacy in kids? Have them attend schools where a greater number of kids are literate when they start school. So says the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).

Mental health on the minds of young Australians Mission Australia’s annual youth survey, now 16 years old, provides one of the better pictures of what young Australians are thinking and concerned about. A total of 24,055 young people aged 15–19 years responded to the survey.

Beating the summertime veg Apparently, the long summer school holiday has its roots in a time when kids were expected to help with the summer planting on the family farm, those days are long gone.

Faith based schools want protections from same-sex marriage It’s been about three weeks since the majority Yes vote for same sex marriage and the debate over amendments and protections to the Bill has started. Elite faith based schools have voiced concerns about defunding and restrictions on hiring.

Congratulations Renee McCarthy 2017 ARIA Music Teacher of the Year At the 2017 ARIA Awards, Renee McCarthy (Ms Mac if you’re her student) from Woodcroft College in Morphett Vale South Australia received the inaugural ARIA Music Teacher of the Year Award.

Amgen biotech experience There’s nothing like getting your hands dirty when you’re learning something new or, in the case of the Amgen Biotech Experience (ABE), your micropipette. The program which has run for close to 30 years in the US and the UK launched in Australia in September after pilot programs were well attended and received. And that’s for good reason; the program gives teachers and students access to (expensive) industry standard equipment and exposure to the work that biomedical researchers and technicians perform every day.

Gaming education If there was one thing that came out of the recently released Digital Australia Report which looked into the effects of gaming in Australia it’s that video games have infused every part of the society.