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 the Ministers of the Education Portfolio, the Albanese Government is laying the foundations for a better future for young people, ensuring that young Australians are heard when creating government policies and programs that impact them. Minister for Youth Dr Anne Aly has launched nationwide consultation, for young people aged 12-25, to inform the Government's youth engagement strategy. The first consultation took place in Perth with 100 young Australians – further consultations will occur around the country over the coming months. “Too many young people feel disengaged with political processes – this is about addressing that and ensuring young people across Australia have a say,” said Dr Aly. Young people can register to attend a consultation session or participate in the online survey at youth.gov.au. There are also opportunities for people and organisations that work with young people to participate.
According to The Australian, Christian schools will pressure politicians to declare their stance on religious education, in a fightback against discrimination reform. In a letter sent to every federal MP on Wednesday, Christian Schools Australia (CSA) revealed that a survey of 8500 parents from 101 schools shows that most rate Christian values and beliefs above academic performance or school facilities. The CSA asks MPs to declare whether religious schools should be able to “enforce standards of conduct and behaviour within the school community consistent with the doctrines, tenets and beliefs of the religion.’’ The letter will likely fuel debate over the legal right of religious schools – which educate roughly one in three Australian children – to discriminate against students and staff in line with religious teachings. The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) is examining a legislative loophole that lets religious schools discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity, relationship status or pregnancy.
According to The Educator, a growing number of senior students are choosing to cut their educational journey short, new figures show. The latest Productivity Commission report shows that the national retention rate from Years 10-12 for full-time students was 79 per cent, the lowest in the last 10 years of data reported. The impact is being most felt in public schools, where nearly 24 per cent of senior students are leaving early, compared to just 10 per cent in private schools. Professor John Fischetti from the University of Newcastle’s College of Human and Social Futures said that several interdependent factors have contributed to this “new normal”. “The first is that student disengagement in the way we ‘do school’ is mostly passively and decontextualised from ‘real life’,” he said. “Another factor is that anxiety, depression and poor health and wellbeing concerns that many young people are experiencing have grown since 2020.”
SBS News reports that seatbelt laws are in the spotlight after a bus crash in NSW's Hunter Valley wine region killed 10 people and injured dozens more. In NSW, you are legally required to wear a seatbelt if one is fitted to a bus, but buses on regular city public transport routes are usually not equipped with seatbelts. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said that the Government could consider mandating seat belts on buses after a truck collided with a bus carrying 46 children from Exford Primary School at nearby Eynesbury in May. Under Victorian law, buses or coaches are not required to have seatbelts unless there is a seat directly facing a front windscreen. But they must be worn if available, including on school buses. In Queensland, the Northern Territory and the ACT, seatbelts must be worn on buses that have them installed. In Western Australia, seatbelts are compulsory on all school buses. In South Australia and Tasmania, seatbelts are not currently mandatory on school buses.
According to the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), NAPLAN results will be available to schools before the end of Term 2. Results will include a school and student summary report (SSSR), and proficiency standards report. NESA will contact schools with instructions on how to access the reports as soon as they are available.
According to The Educator, the Victorian Department of Education will give the State’s public schools an extra $130 million for their budgets over four years to resolve the school camp time in lieu “off duty” dispute. The decision means that staff who attend a school camp overnight will now be regarded as being at least on call for eight hours and receive payment for this time. For the remaining hours on a school camp, outside of the overnight hours and normal hours of duty, employees required to attend as part of the student supervision ratios will also accrue time in lieu for being either on call or performing duties. The dispute began last year when the Department issued school time in lieu operational guidelines stating that teachers and education support staff required to attend school camps could be “off-duty” overnight and would therefore not be eligible for the time in lieu entitlements provided for in the Victorian Government Schools Agreement 2022.
According to the Herald Sun, schools will not know if they have to pay the Andrews Government’s controversial payroll tax changes until laws enabling them are already passed, prompting further concerns about the reform. Education Minister Natalie Hutchins was grilled on Tuesday over the uncertainty for non-government schools at budget estimates. Last month, the state budget included plans to lift the payroll tax exemption for “high fee” schools. It was expected to apply to at least 110 schools and rake in $420 million over three years, prompting a backlash from Catholic schools, who warned that it would raise fees and unfairly hurt middle-income families. On Friday, Premier Daniel Andrews said that the threshold for this tax would now be raised to include fewer schools and bring in less money than first outlined. But when asked about the specifics of this change on Tuesday, Ms Hutchins said that it would not be finalised until the Bill had already passed as legislation.
According to the Herald Sun, the number of VCE students nominating as “gender X” has quadrupled in three years – and these non-binary students are outperforming boys in a number of subjects. In 2022 there were almost 200 students who identified as gender diverse in Year 12 – up from 54 in 2020 and 28 in 2017. Gender X students are unevenly distributed among subjects, ranging from 0.04 per cent in accounting to 1.8 per cent in sociology and art. Other subjects with a greater proportion of gender X students are media (1.1 per cent) and revolutions (0.8 per cent). Victoria allowed students to declare their gender as non-binary in 2017. It was the second state to do so. The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s move followed complaints that trans or gender-diverse students felt misgendered by having to choose male or female on official documents. At the time, LGBTIQ+ advocates hailed the move as a “huge step”.
The Age reports that all schools have critical incident management plans and teams, but when disasters strike, there is a broader system to help schools stay open and students and staff to heal. Victoria’s 24/7 school crisis team is probably the most sophisticated in the country, says Simon Milligan, the Education Department’s executive director of security and emergency management. The Department’s Incident Support and Operations Centre helps principals deal with issues such as break-ins, severely disruptive student behaviour, aggressive parents, nearby fires, road accidents and student deaths. It works with Catholic and independent schools when there’s a large-scale incident. Milligan, who has a background in psychology and the military, said that most schools would have contact with the centre each year. “We came out of the bushfires into COVID and then into floods, but the primary work is the day-to-day incidents,” he said.
According to The Courier Mail, an unvaccinated teacher has lost his latest fight to appeal a decision to suspend him without pay after he was stood down during the COVID-19 pandemic. Maryborough State High School senior teacher Joshua Carr received a letter dated 10 January 2022, advising him that he was not able to work due to being unvaccinated against COVID. In this latest appeal in the Industrial Court of Queensland, Mr Carr said that he had asked for certain information concerning his suspension that was never provided to him and that, having regard to the Critical Workforce Shortages provisions in the First and Second Chief Health Officer (CHO) Directions and in the Departmental Direction, he was available to attend work during the period of his suspension. But in its decision, the court found that the primary provisions of the CHO Directions were that if a worker was unvaccinated, they could not attend a high-risk setting, such as a school. Mr Carr’s appeal was dismissed.
According to The Courier Mail, Queensland Secondary Principals Association president Mark Breckenridge said that ChatGPT and similar AI was becoming increasingly used in schools. Mr Breckenridge described AI as the “biggest change to education” in decades but warned that it was crucial that it was used carefully and in appropriate settings. Mr Breckenridge said that teachers and principals could use AI to potentially save time in class. “Because it’s so time saving it’s being used as a starting point. Principals can say to ChatGPT ‘give me 300 words for a newsletter’ or ‘a speech’ and again they refine it.” According to a Federal Department of Industry discussion paper titled “Safe and responsible AI in Australia”, AI technologies are already deployed in society. The paper also listed concerns around AI such as the generation of deepfakes to influence democratic processes, the creation of misinformation and disinformation, and encouraging people to self-harm.
According to The Australian, Jayeldon Mamarika was killed when his teacher, Ian De Silva, rolled a school-owned 4WD while doing fishtails on the way back from a sports excursion in December 2021. The children in the back, including Jayeldon, were not wearing seatbelts when De Silva lost control of the vehicle. It flipped three-quarters, throwing Jayeldon from the vehicle and trapping him beneath it. Jayeldon was unresponsive and later pronounced dead. The Northern Territory Supreme Court heard that all four charges are aggravated because the teacher was in a position of trust in relation to the students. Also, De Silva did not have a valid Northern Territory driver’s licence. Alongside the criminal case, NT WorkSafe investigated the crash, finding that De Silva was responsible for transferring his licence from Victoria and identified no breaches by the school under the work health and safety laws. De Silva’s criminal case has been adjourned to 15 August for sentencing.
According to the New Zealand Herald, frustrated parents are torn over fears that strike action has gone too far and children will be unable to “catch up” on learning, and the belief that teachers are being undervalued. Secondary teachers voted overwhelmingly to reject the latest Ministry of Education collective agreement offer and go on strike again. At the same time that they voted on the latest offer, the union members also voted on further strike action for the rest of Term 2. This time two year-levels will be rostered home each day. The rejection comes after primary teachers voted to accept the latest Ministry of Education collective agreement offer. It followed a long negotiation campaign that included the largest education strike in New Zealand’s history. Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand president Vaughan Couillault said that principals across the country believed that it was “quite unfortunate” that the parties haven’t reached a resolution.
The Guardian reports that changes by the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) to the way it inspects schools have been criticised as “nowhere near enough” to reduce the high levels of stress involved, which were linked to the recent death of a teacher. The reforms announced by Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, are intended to ease the burden felt by school leaders such as Ruth Perry, 53, who died by suicide after an Ofsted inspection lowered her school’s grade from “outstanding” to “inadequate”. Spielman and the Department for Education (DfE) have refused to budge on the most contentious issue: the labelling by Ofsted of schools in England with a single overall grade, such as “inadequate”. The biggest change announced by Spielman would allow schools rated inadequate solely because of errors in safeguarding procedures to be re-inspected by Ofsted within three months, allowing school leaders to quickly fix concerns.
According to scoop.co.nz, a press release by ACT New Zealand claims, “We have a truancy crisis in this country and no one is being held accountable – not the parents, not the schools. The Government and the Ministry of Education are weak and incompetent.” The press release continues, “We need accountability. That means mandatory daily attendance reporting and fines for parents who refuse to send their kids to school, as set out in ACT’s truancy plan released in November.” ACT’s five ideas to get kids back in the classroom include daily national attendance reporting, empowering schools to deal with truancy, collection of data connected to a traffic light system, an infringement notice regime for parents, and accountability for schools through mandatory reporting.