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.
According to an article in The Educator, Blaxland MP Jason Clare has been named Federal Education Minister in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s first ministry. Tanya Plibersek, who was widely expected to become education minister, was named Minister for Environment and Water, taking over from Sussan Ley. Brendan O’Connor will take on the skills and training portfolio while Anne Aly will become Early Childhood Education Minister. Clare, who succeeds Alan Tudge, called his appointment “an extraordinary privilege”. “Education is the most powerful cause for good in this country. It will be an extraordinary privilege to serve as Minister for Education in an Albanese Labor Government,” Clare said on Twitter on Tuesday night following the Prime Minister’s unveiling of the new cabinet. Clare’s appointment has been broadly welcomed across the nation’s education sector.
ABC News reports that more than 4 million Australian school students were at risk of unprecedented tracking and surveillance during remote learning as corporations exploited their access to children. The global advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) analysed 164 educational apps and websites used in 49 countries, running tests on the code and attempting to track where the data of hundreds of millions of children worldwide ended up. The HRW findings show that 89 per cent of the educational technology, or "EdTech", products used globally could put children's privacy at risk. Despite international privacy obligations, the products requested access to students' contacts and locations and monitored their keystrokes. The data was sent to nearly 200 ad-technology companies. In Australia, it is alleged a number of companies did not meet the promises made in their privacy statements. Products of concern identified by HRW include Adobe Connect, Minecraft: Education Edition, and Education Perfect: Science.
The Australian reports that a new Mission Australia and Orygen survey of 20,000 teenagers reveals the pandemic’s toll on teens’ physical and mental health, as well as their financial and housing stability, during 2021. The survey of 15 to 19-year-olds, undertaken between April and August when Sydney and Melbourne were in full lockdown, detected that half the students were suffering mental health problems. Girls and gender-diverse teenagers were nearly twice as likely as boys to experience mental illness during lockdowns. Two-thirds of girls and just over half the boys said the pandemic had harmed their education. Nearly half of all teenagers said the pandemic had affected their physical health, and one in three said it had damaged relationships with friends and family. Eighty per cent said they had felt lonely in the month before the survey. The report – prepared jointly with youth mental health organisation Orygen, the provider of Headspace services – calls for the extension of Medicare rebates for 20 psychological sessions a year.
The Guardian reports that at least 68 children have been left on buses in Australia in the past five years – a rate of more than one a month. Earlier this month, three-year-old Nevaeh Austin was treated in intensive care after being found unconscious on a bus outside her Queensland childcare centre. She had been left on the bus alone for six hours in temperatures over 30C. On Thursday, a Perth childcare provider was fined $27,000 after a five-year-old boy was left upset, hot and sweaty on a locked bus for more than two hours. Kids Active Southern River was found by the state administrative tribunal to have breached education and care services laws in relation to the incident, which happened on the way back from an excursion in September 2021. Staff members did not check the bus after the children got off. A head count was conducted, but it was not recognised at that point that a child was unaccounted for.
The Australian reports that since 2008, the AIEF has awarded scholarships to more than 1200 students from more than 400 communities, with the program assisting hundreds of undergraduate and postgraduate students to help cover boarding fees and some cost-of-living expenses at university. In 2021, the foundation achieved a completion rate of 94 per cent among its scholarship students, with 92 per cent of its alumni now engaged in employment or completing further studies. Kyh Samuelsson, who is now completing a degree in commerce at Macquarie University after finishing at Knox last year, said educational support offered by the AIEF was the best way to develop young Indigenous leaders. “I think the most important thing in our culture right now is having educated Indigenous kids,” he said. Five years after Kyh Samuelsson won his scholarship to Knox Grammar, sister Jaidey left the family home in Lightning Ridge to travel to Sydney to start school at Pymble Ladies’ College.
The NSW Education Standards Authority is reminding principals of non-government schools and representatives of non-government school registration systems that all non-government schools are required to produce, publicly disclose and submit electronically to NESA a 2021 annual report by 30 June 2022. Annual reporting requirements are detailed in section 3.10.1 of the Registered and Accredited Individual Non-government Schools (NSW) Manual and section 5.10.1 of the Registration Systems and Member Non-government Schools (NSW) Manual. Submission of annual reports is via NESA’s registration website: RANGS Online.
If you require help in accessing RANGS Online, please contact Senior Registration Officer, Bernardine Burnett on (02) 9367 8873.
ABC News reports that Citipointe Christian College has become the subject of discrimination complaints lodged with the Queensland Human Rights Commission. The Brisbane college demanded parents sign a contract at the beginning of the school year that denounced homosexuality and stipulated students could only be enrolled on the basis of their "biological sex". The contract included "a statement of faith" that described homosexual acts as "immoral". The matter was referred to the Non-State School Accreditation Board before the school withdrew the contract and principal Brian Mulheran resigned. Parents of former students at the school said they are taking legal action to prevent further instances of discrimination at Citipointe, and other Australian schools, on the basis of sexuality and gender identity. LGBTI+ Legal Service patron and solicitor Matilda Alexander said the enrolment contract was a breach of Queensland's anti-discrimination laws and caused "serious harm" to students.
ABC News reports that educators and creative industry leaders are concerned for the future of some arts and humanities subjects in Queensland high schools, as students abandon them in the belief they will secure a higher ATAR with science-based subjects. Last year, there was a total of just 12,772 enrolments — a drop of more than 44 per cent. "What we're seeing is that the arts subjects are scaling the lowest as a learning area," Rachael Dwyer said, a lecturer in curriculum and pedagogy at the University of the Sunshine Coast and co-chair for Queensland Advocates for Arts Education. Dr Dwyer and Drama Queensland president Stephanie Tudor said the message that comes from "subject scaling", sends high-achieving students away from the arts, even if students excel in those areas. "It does become this self-fulfilling prophecy that if high-achieving students are told that this subject will scale poorly — they won't do that subject and therefore it will continue to scale poorly."
The Kalgoorlie Miner reports that North Kalgoorlie Primary School students marked the beginning of Reconciliation Week on Friday with a smoking ceremony and assembly. The school’s Aboriginal and Islander education officer Gavin Murray said, “I feel it’s important to not only just Indigenous (peoples), but all people in Australia so that we can go down a better path. Reconciliation means us coming together as a nation.” Mr Murray also recited a poem he wrote as a tribute to his grandmother, Francis (Imeia) Murray, who was forcibly removed from her family during the late 1930s as part of the stolen generations. Mr Murray will teach students about Aboriginal culture, the meaning of acknowledgement of country and history in the Goldfields region. National Reconciliation Week will run from May 27 until June 3. These dates commemorate two significant milestones in the reconciliation journey — the successful 1967 referendum and the 1992 High Court Mabo decision.
According to a media statement from The West Australian Government, the Australian Centre for Child Protection (ACCP) has launched the Western Australian arm of its national program, which focuses on supports, training and research for children who have been sexually abused or are displaying harmful sexual behaviours. The ACCP is a national research centre within the University of South Australia and has been leading the way in research, evaluation, policy and practice for over 17 years. The WA branch will be known as the Australian Centre for Child Protection - Western Australia (ACCP-WA) and will conduct research that helps develop policy that safeguards WA children. A program of work has been established, focusing on research and translating research into practice to improve responses to harmful sexual behaviours. This will improve the State's capability to intervene safely and effectively when children display these behaviours.
According to an article in The Mercury, the Tasmanian parliament will make a formal apology to the victim-survivors of child sexual abuse, Premier Jeremy Rockliff said. Announcing a multimillion dollar suite of child safety reforms in state Parliament, Mr Rockliff said he wanted to make child protection one of the major reforms during his time in office. The Premier said the government would pass laws creating new offences. “Legislation will be drafted this year to create a new crime of ‘failing to protect a child or young person’ for people in authority within an organisation who fail to safeguard a child from substantial risk of sexual abuse by an adult associated with that organisation,” he said. “Our government also plans to amend the Criminal Code to introduce a presumption that children under the age of 17 cannot consent to sexual intercourse when a person is in a position of authority over them. He also flagged major reforms around how the government deals with lawsuits brought by survivors.
The Guardian reports that school leaders have described advice from the attorney general to “take a much firmer line” with pupils who identify as transgender as “unhelpful” and potentially damaging to children’s mental health. Suella Braverman said schools in England do not have to accommodate pupils who want to change gender and are under no legal obligation to address them by a new pronoun or let them wear a different uniform. Braverman told the Times that under the law, under-18s cannot legally change their gender, so schools are entitled to treat all children by the gender of their birth. This prompted criticism from Caroline Derbyshire, the executive head at Saffron Walden county high school, leader of the Saffron academy trust and chair of the Headteachers’ Roundtable: “I am a believer in rules and following them, but I think that not listening to young people and their parents on this quite particular and personal matter would risk damaging mental health.”
According to an article in stuff.co.nz, the New Zealand Human Rights Commission recently released new official school uniform guidelines, designed to provide a “non-binding guidance on school uniform policies from a Te Tiriti o Waitangi and human rights lens”. Marli Atu hopes the new guidelines for schools will stop students feeling “ashamed” of their identity or even being kicked out of school altogether for expressing their culture. The now 19-year-old changed schools rather than cover up his tatau, a Fijian and Samoan tattoo, given to him on his 16th birthday. Atu was joined by his mother, Taieri MP Ingrid Leary, at Dunedin’s Bayfield High School recently when the New Zealand Human Rights Commission officially released its school uniform guidelines. Leary said her son’s experience, and several other high profile cases in her electorate – including one where an African-American student was told to stop wearing his hair in cornrows – prompted a push for the guidelines.