The information in the Weekly Wrap is aggregated from other news sources to provide you with news that is relevant to the education sector across Australia and worldwide. Each paragraph is a summary of the subject matter covered in the particular news article. The information does not necessarily reflect the views of CompliSpace.
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According to yahoo!sport, sexual consent laws could be made more consistent across jurisdictions with experts, advocates and support services to give their input at key hearings this week. A senate committee is putting existing laws under the microscope as part of a push for reform to strengthen protections for survivors, increase consent education and examine justice system responses to sexual crimes. Many submissions call for consistent laws across the country, including a standardised age of consent, which is 16 in most jurisdictions and 17 in South Australia and Tasmania. Advocates are also calling for a law requiring active communication of consent. This is known as "affirmative consent" and means that silence or lack of resistance cannot be interpreted as consent. NSW, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT have all adopted some form of communicative or affirmative consent laws while WA, SA and the NT have not.
According to The Educator, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), with 38 member countries, has documented a strong link between screens and internet use and declining academic outcomes. Meanwhile, a growing body of evidence shows that screen time is negatively impacting many aspects of child and adolescent development and may even be altering the developing brain in ways that we do not yet understand. In its research, the OECD has noted something that many schools that have spent big on digital devices over the previous decades might find alarming – countries whose school students spend less time on screens and online get better academic outcomes in international testing. Next week, UNESCO will release the findings of its 2023 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report titled "Technology in Education: A Tool on Whose Terms?" Its authors say that the findings will emphasise a need to prioritise the learner's needs, rather than digital inputs.
According to the Herald Sun, private school parents have been warned of a scam trying to con them into handing their financial details over to thieves for payment of school fees. Parents are called by a scammer pretending to be from school, offering a 30 per cent discount on fees if they pay straight away. The parent gives their credit card details and invoice details, and the scammer pays the school with a credit card via e-payment BPOINT. The parent gets a receipt for the payment and the scammer than makes a second payment then calls the parent to say the payment was made twice and will be refunded. The school is then called by the scammer pretending to be the parent and asking for a refund, which is then not paid to the actual parent but the fraudster. According to the ACCC, Australians lost a record $3.1 billion to scammers in 2022.
According to the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), as part of NESA’s Teacher Accreditation Reforms, teachers no longer need to record Elective Professional Development (PD) in eTAMS. Instead, you can simply record it in the way that best suits you. Record Elective PD in your daybook, diary, NESA’s personal log template or another method of your choice. You only need to record:
According to the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), printed copies of NAPLAN 2023 reports for parents and carers have been sent to schools. Schools should distribute reports to parents and carers by Friday 28 July. If your school did not receive the reports by Wednesday 26 July, please contact the NAPLAN team.
According to 9news.com.au, a teacher who was sentenced to community work for having a sexual relationship with her teenage student should have been jailed, prosecutors say. Monique Ooms walked free from Victoria's County Court in March after admitting to having sex with her 16-year-old male student while he was under her care or supervision. She was ordered to perform 300 hours of community work after pleading guilty to four charges, but the Director of Public Prosecutions has appealed this sentence. Ooms, who is now 17-weeks' pregnant, struck up a supportive friendship with the boy and spoke over Instagram and text messages before they started a sexual relationship, the court heard previously. The school was notified anonymously and Ooms was stood down. Ooms faced the Court of Appeal in Melbourne, where prosecutors argued that she should have been handed a jail sentence.
The Age reports that Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich said that he heard concerns “almost daily” about incidents of antisemitic harassment and abuse in Victorian schools. “These cases are just the tip of the iceberg and are symptomatic of something very troubling that is taking place in Victoria,” he said. Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive officer Peter Wertheim said that he did not think there were strong enough policies in Victorian state schools to support Jewish students. The number of antisemitic incidents reported across Australia in 2022 was the highest in a decade, with 478 incidents – a 6.9 per cent increase from 2021. In June last year, Victoria became the first state to ban the public display of the Nazi symbol. Under proposed federal laws, people who display or trade Nazi hate symbols would also face up to 12 months in jail. It is mandatory for Victorian government schools to teach students about the Holocaust as part of the Level 9/10 history curriculum.
“Pretty traumatised by it”: Parent’s fury as busload of school kids booted off, abandoned during afternoon route
According to news.com.au, a mother has revealed that her two daughters are too “traumatised” to catch their school bus anymore after a busload of children – some as young as five – were kicked off and left stranded some 10km from their final stop. About 18 students from Brisbane-based state schools were on board at the time the bus driver kicked them off. It’s understood that the driver became irate at children allegedly misbehaving during the route, pulling over and leaving the kids stranded. A Translink spokesperson said that they requested that their delivery partner, Bus Queensland, investigate the incident after receiving complaints from parents. “Bus Queensland has taken immediate disciplinary action against the driver, while the incident and the events leading up to it are being reviewed,” the spokesperson said. “The driver is no longer employed with Bus Queensland. Translink apologises for the distress caused by this incident and it does not meet our expectations of delivery partners.”
According to The Maitland Mercury, South Australian teachers have been urged to stop performing duties not directly related to learning for Term 3 amid ongoing negotiations for a new enterprise agreement. The Australian Education Union says that public schools have an escalating staffing crisis. "Educators are papering over the cracks with their unpaid goodwill and the Government is taking advantage of it," branch president Andrew Gohl said. "Parents probably don't realise their child's teacher is working 50 hours to keep a broken system running, working late into the night and on weekends to fulfil data and admin requirements." Mr Gohl said that the union had been negotiating a new pay and conditions agreement with the State Government for more than six months, pursuing a bold platform focused on reducing workload and increasing student support.
According to the Government of South Australia, the ban on mobile phone use in South Australian public schools has now come into effect. The new rules are in place at all of South Australia’s 158 public schools with secondary enrolments. The ‘off and away’ policy has been introduced to reduce distraction in the classroom and stop some of the bullying that occurs through social media, with both outcomes leading to improved learning. In South Australia, all public high school students must switch their devices off or onto flight mode and put them away during school hours, during break times and on school excursions. The policy specifically bans all personal devices with the capability to connect to internet networks including mobile phones, tablets and smart watches, but does not apply to school-owned technologies or learning devices brought under Bring Your Own Device programs. Principals can also approve individual student exemptions in specific circumstances.
The Age reports that a 37-year-old man who allegedly took a young girl from outside her Perth primary school on Friday morning has appeared in court after being charged by police. Friends of the young girl say that she did not know the man, Ryan Ashley Darken, whose car she was allegedly enticed into. Darken appeared in Perth Magistrates Court on Saturday morning, charged with detaining another with intent to harm, deprivation of liberty, assault and making threats. He was remanded to Rockingham Magistrates Court on 4 September. Police were alerted by another parent from the school just before 9am. She had seen the child get into a car that she thought looked suspicious and reported it to the school. “School did their due diligence in checking to see if the child was at school,” acting Detective Inspector Scott Johnson, from the sex crimes division, said. Johnson praised the parent who raised the alarm.
According to 1news.co.nz, a teacher has been stripped of his teaching registration for serious misconduct after swearing at students who were taking too long to leave his classroom. It comes after the teacher involved, Hēnare Piripi Hūtana, swore five or six times at a pair of students in an angry and/or aggressive manner on 20 May 2019, a report from the Teaching Council said. Hūtana was placed on disciplinary leave the following day pending a meeting on 30 May 2019, after the principal of the school was made aware of the incident. Hūtana then went on sick leave, and the meeting was moved to 12 June 2019. Hūtana resigned from his teaching position while still on sick leave, effective from 13 October 2019. Twelve attempts were made to get input from Hūtana regarding an investigation into the incident between 3 July 2019, and 15 July, 2021, but he failed to respond. Hūtana, through his representative, accepted that his actions constituted serious misconduct.
According to JD Supra, with the existing U.S. framework for protecting children's online privacy widely criticised as weak and outdated, there has been a flurry of legislative activity at both the state and federal levels. California has led the way with the passage of the expansive California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (AADC), enacted in 2022 and set to go into effect on 1 July 2024. However, a pending federal lawsuit, NetChoice LLC v. Bonta, seeks to block it, arguing that it violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and is preempted by existing federal laws. With a preliminary injunction hearing set for 27 July, individuals and businesses subject to the AADC are about to find out whether they must move quickly to come into compliance with its requirements, which proponents of the law say are necessary to protect children online, but the lawsuit alleges are overbroad, vague, and would effectively censor significant amounts of online speech, including for adults.
According to Human Resources Director, a teacher has been censured by the New Zealand Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal for "gross breach of trust" after she stole nearly $20,000 from her previous employer. The teacher, who was a consultant in Pasifika Education, carried out the theft between 2012 and 2018 by issuing fraudulent invoices with her billing information to trainee organisations. She received a total of $19,200 after 23 instances of the misconduct and was only discovered by her employer in February 2018 after an education provider noticed the disparity. The employee was fired in March 2018, but repaid her employer between May 2019 and December 2019. She also plead guilty to the offence of "obtaining by deception" under the Crimes Act 1961 (NZ) and was discharged without conviction. The matter, however, reached the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand after the employer lodged a mandatory report in March 2018.