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.
The ABC News reports that Cardinal George Pell should have advised senior Catholic authorities to remove a paedophile priest in 1989, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has found. But the Royal Commission rejected an allegation that Cardinal Pell offered to bribe an abuse survivor in order to prevent him from speaking out. In its unredacted reports tabled by the Federal Government this morning, the Commission found that Cardinal Pell, who was then an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne, should have advocated for Father Peter Searson to be removed. Father Searson died in 2009 without facing charges, but the Commission heard he abused children in parishes and schools across three districts over more than a decade. Cardinal Pell told the inquiry he was handed a list of grievances and allegations about Father Searson in 1989, but believed the Catholic Education Office and the then-Archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little, were handling the allegations levelled against the priest, and did not think it was his place to investigate them. However the Commission found as an auxilliary bishop at the time, Cardinal Pell should have taken action. The Royal Commission also found that by 1973, Cardinal Pell was aware of child abuse by clergy and had considered measures to avoid situations that "might provoke gossip about it". The Commission found a claim by David Ridsdale, the nephew of Gerald Ridsdale, that he was offered a bribe by Cardinal Pell in 1993 was unlikely.
According to an article in The Conversation, the Commonwealth and States have done a pretty good job of cooperating so far. The National Cabinet of Commonwealth Ministers and State Premiers (a concept not found in the Constitution) has made joint decisions on the public health response. But the messaging on schools has been inconsistent with the Federal Government claiming it’s safe, while some Premiers have taken their own route and transitioned to online learning. Legally and constitutionally the Commonwealth can’t force schools to open. The fact it has attempted to induce independent schools to reopen by bringing forward a payment highlights that the Commonwealth’s involvement in education, as in so many areas, is through the power of the purse. Could the Commonwealth claim we are in a national emergency and kids must go back to school? That would be harder to argue than that they should stay home to avoid the virus. It would also be hard for the Commonwealth to argue that an economic imperative trumps a state’s judgement about what is safe for the community.
The West Australian reports that parents nervous about the growing threat of COVID-19 first started ignoring the pleas of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Premier Mark McGowan to keep sending their children to school towards the end of Term 1.. Most educators expected and planned for distance learning to continue for at least four weeks after the Easter holidays, but halfway through the break Mr McGowan announced that public schools would be open for all students whose parents chose to send them. By the first day of Term 2 last Wednesday, 58.5 per cent of public school students had flooded into classrooms, swelling to 60.2 per cent on Thursday. But 40 per cent of public school students not fronting up translates to thousands of children across WA — and that is not even counting the students enrolled at private schools.
The Age reports that testing teachers and students for coronavirus at the school gate would protect and reassure staff should Victoria change its conservative position on classroom attendance. Infectious disease experts urged the adoption of the "sensible measure", which could also help fill gaps in research on the effects of coronavirus on children. The calls came as the Federal Government offered $13 billion in fast-tracked annual funding to Victoria's independent schools in an attempt to lure them into reopening in contradiction of current state government advice. Professor Nigel McMillan, the head of Griffith University's Infectious Diseases and Immunology program, said greater testing of children was the only way to properly determine risk in schools. “We are missing a bit of information at the moment and if we don’t look we won’t find,” Professor McMillan said. “We haven’t yet randomly tested kids to see what is out there.”
According to WAtoday, almost half of Australia's students will have their educational outcomes damaged if existing remote learning arrangements continue long term, according to an expert group convened by Australia's chief scientist. The Rapid Response Information Forum, chaired by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel and involving 35 research and science bodies led by the Australian Academy of Science, was commissioned by the Federal Government to provide advice on school operations during the coronavirus pandemic. Its report to federal Education Minister Dan Tehan came as 1289 non-government schools took up the government's offer of a funding incentive to return to classrooms by the end of May. The forum analysed research on the impact of online learning on education outcomes and found the limited available evidence suggested "an extended period of remote learning is likely to result in poorer educational outcomes for almost half of Australian students".
According to an opinion piece in The Age by Neil Selwyn, a professor at the Faculty of Education at Monash University, the 2010s saw a growing tendency to argue against the principle of mass compulsory schooling. Different voices from outside the education community continue to chip away at the idea of fixed-schedule, bricks-and-mortar schools. We're warned repeatedly that mass schooling is "broken". We're told that school systems provide a "cookie-cutter" education that fails our best and brightest. It's argued that schools are stuck in an outdated "factory" model based on impersonal and inefficient "batch processing" of students, and that mass schooling needs to be reinvented – if not replaced altogether. Yet all this thinking is being put into stark relief by the unfolding development of the coronavirus, COVID-19. School closures have highlighted the fact that millions of children rely on their schools for subsidised food, mental health support, and respite from unsatisfactory circumstances at home.
According to an article in The Conversation, there is a plethora of education policy mandating teachers incorporate Indigenous perspectives across year levels and subject areas. But in practice, this is much harder to do without Indigenous perspectives becoming trivialised or tokenistic. Many teachers don’t feel confident or capable to include Indigenous perspectives in their classrooms. In the authors’ recent study in a cluster of primary and secondary schools, teachers were paired with Aboriginal community members to plan and deliver lessons. Initially, teachers reported feeling ill-equipped to genuinely include an Aboriginal perspective.Research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander high school students highlights the frustration Indigenous students feel, particularly during history lessons. Teachers must critically reflect on their own identity and how it potentially influences their personal bias and worldview. They must also be willing to confront the ongoing effects of colonialism in and outside the classroom and listen to Indigenous people.
According to a media release from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), ACARA is very disappointed at the publication by a major news organisation on 29 April of crude league tables that rank schools using average NAPLAN scores. The publication of these tables is in contravention to the terms of use of the My School website. Importantly for parents, these articles do not provide the information they claim to provide; that is, information on the performance of schools. This is because performance cannot be measured just by looking at the average score of the students at the school. Parents wanting information on how their school is performing in NAPLAN should not rely on league tables in these articles, but instead visit the My School website and review the progress graphs for their school.
The ABC News reports that the Federal Government has acknowledged some survivors of child sexual abuse have died before receiving financial compensation, as it releases the latest data from the national redress scheme. Since the start of this year, a further nine institutions named in the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, plus almost 80 other bodies, have committed to the scheme. But other institutions remain noticeably absent, meaning some survivors cannot have their application for redress processed. Out of the 6,605 applications the scheme has received so far, only 1,587 payments (worth a total of $128.4 million) have been made. Social Services Minister Senator Anne Ruston said the governance board for the scheme recently met and agreed on new measures to improve application times, support services and transparency. She also repeated the Government's threat to name any institutions which had not signed up in two months' time. "On the 30th of June all bets are off in terms of protecting those organisations in the process of joining," she said. Labor is calling for the Government to lift the cap on payments by $50,000 to $200,000.
The Educator reports that, as debate rages over the return date of kids to the classroom, the Australian Primary Principals Association calls for school leaders to be involved in the decision making. In a statement last week, the Australian Primary Principals Association (APPA) said it was concerned over the health risks to teachers, saying the safety of teachers is “far from guaranteed” despite medical opinion that risks are low in school settings. “Whilst it is a huge blessing that COVID-19 has had thus far limited impact on the young, the concern of the APPA is with the many members of the teaching population being of an age where this virus has a stronger effect on older Australians,” APPA president Malcolm Elliott said. Meanwhile, a new study by Dr Adele Schmidt – a research officer for the Independent Education Union of Australia – Queensland and Northern Territory (IEUA-QNT) branch – warns that reopening schools at this time could be dangerous.
The Guardian reports that fewer than one in five of the British public believe the time is right to consider reopening schools, restaurants, pubs and stadiums. The findings, in a new poll for the Observer, suggest Boris Johnson will struggle to convince people to return their lives to normal if he tries to ease the lockdown soon. The poll by Opinium, taken between Wednesday and Friday last week, found 17 per cent of people think the conditions have been met to consider reopening schools, against 67 per cent who say they have not been, and that they should stay closed. The battle over Britain’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis comes as Ireland has decided to extend its lockdown for a further two weeks to 18 May, when it will begin a five-stage exit over three months, culminating in the phased reopening of schools and universities from 10 August.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that medical experts have assured Australian parents a coronavirus cluster at a New Zealand school that has so far infected 94 people is no reason to fear sending their children back to classrooms. The cluster began at Marist College in Auckland, a Catholic girls' school, with a teacher who tested positive on March 22. The New Zealand Herald reported she had not been overseas or in contact with any returned traveller, and the origin of her infection is still unknown. In Australia, some parents, doctors and commentators, including GP and former federal MP Kerryn Phelps, have cited the Marist cluster as proof we should be more cautious about sending students back into Australian classrooms. However, medical experts have dismissed those concerns, telling The Sun-Herald the outbreak did not ipso facto show children are susceptible to the virus.