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 the Herald Sun, more than 85,000 private school students and staff across the country are at risk of being attacked by hackers, a new report has found. Leading cybersecurity company Proofpoint said that, out of the 100 independent schools analysed, more than half are vulnerable to email-based phishing attacks. Proofpoint’s senior director Steve Moros said that cybercriminals find schools easy to exploit because students are most likely to fall for phishing scams. He said that cybercriminals would be after sensitive information such as addresses, contact details, medical records and staff’s bank and credit card information held inside a school system. “No matter their size or number of students enrolled, schools remain an attractive target for scammers due to the large and diverse amount of data they store,” Mr Moros said. “Only when these schools start shoring up their cybersecurity defences will they ensure that malicious emails can’t compromise their data.”
According to The Conversation, the Federal Government is declaring war on vaping, announcing measures to stamp out its recreational use – especially among the young – including by stronger legislation and enforcement action. In a tough message, Health Minister Mark Butler declared: “Vaping has become the number one behavioural issue in high schools. And it’s becoming widespread in primary schools.” The Government will work with the states and territories to clamp down on the increasing black market in vaping, including to stop the illegal import of non-prescription vapes. The minimum quality standards for prescription vapes will be increased, with restrictions on flavours and colours. Prescription vapes will have to come in “pharmacy-like packaging”. The permissible nicotine concentrations and volumes will be reduced, and single-use, disposable vapes will be banned.
According to The Australian, stressed school teachers will be trained to control chaotic classrooms through smartphone bans and an “eyes on me’’ approach to lessons. With rowdy behaviour robbing one in three teachers of teaching time, the Federal Government will spend $3.5 million on an Engaged Classrooms initiative. The project will train teachers to set routines and use strategies to keep distracted students on track during lessons. Education Minister Jason Clare said that educators want “more time to teach”. “When students are fully engaged in the classroom, they learn at their best, and teachers have more time to teach,’’ he said. The Australian Education Research Organisation will set rules and routines, and provide video demonstrations and online training materials to help teachers stay in control of classes.
According to The Australian, a pioneering British computer scientist who is known as the “godfather of AI” has quit his role at Google so that he can warn about the technology’s dangers. Geoffrey Hinton, who developed the foundations of modern machine learning, said the speed of change in AI was “scary” and needed to be regulated. “Look at how [AI] was five years ago and how it is now,” he said. “Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.” Professor Hinton said that he had changed his view that it would be some time before AI was more intelligent than humans. Professor Hinton, a former winner of the prestigious Turing award, backed a recent call from leading researchers and tech executives for companies to pause their most advanced development. “I don’t think they should scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it,” he said.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Macleay Vocational College is one of a surging number of independent special assistance schools – there are now almost 100 nationally – set up to provide alternative schooling for disengaged or disadvantaged youth who have fallen out of the mainstream system. A new report from Independent Schools Australia reveals that the number of students in special assistance schools has tripled from 2014 to 2022, with 13,100 students enrolled, accounting for about two per cent of students in the private school system. Principal Ryan Martin says that Macleay is often a lifeline for students who have dropped out of mainstream schools, and describes the trauma experienced by some children as “eye-watering”. The school provides meals and also runs a mothers and babies program that allows young parents to attend classes while their babies and toddlers are cared for in an adjacent crèche.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that students are more likely to be excluded from NSW schools for physical violence than any other reason, making up a record 45 per cent of all long suspensions in the first half of 2022. New figures reveal that across public primary and high schools about 22,600 students received a suspension in the first half of last year, a reduction of about 15 per cent from the same time in 2021. But physical violence is now the reason almost half of all long suspensions are issued, rising from 39 per cent in 2013. The figures come as the new NSW Labor Government launches a review into a controversial discipline policy rolled out in Term 4 last year that restricted the length and number of suspensions schools could issue. The policy – which stops students from being sent home more than three times a year – has triggered concern among educators that it limited the ability of teachers to manage disruptive and dangerous behaviour in classrooms.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that vape detectors would be installed in the State’s public schools from July under a plan outlined in tender contracts seeking to secure 40,000 of the devices, which will also pick up students smoking THC in the toilets. Education Minister Prue Car said that the detectors were just one option being considered to combat the vaping crisis in high schools but that no final decision had been made. According to NSW Department of Education documents published to the Government’s eTendering website last week, the vape detection devices would be installed in common spaces such as bathrooms from July this year and would be equipped with Wi-Fi technology that triggered a notification if a student was vaping. Vape detectors can cost up to $2000 per unit and have been installed in several private schools.
According to the Department of Education, the NSW Government has begun to lift the administrative burden on NSW teachers with cuts to red tape coming in last week. The Government has announced the halving of more than 70 mandated changes to policies and processes that were due to roll out in Term 2, to only those that were essential and have minimal impact on frontline teachers, as well as a pause and review of all pilots and programs starting in Term 2 to consult teachers on which ones to continue. Before the election, Labor announced that it would instruct the Department to conduct a line-by-line audit of all administrative tasks that teachers are required to do, to deliver a reduction of five hours of administrative work per week. Among the changes stopped are activities relating to the surveying of teachers, the reporting of information, and administrative work.
According to the National Indigenous Times, the Yoorrook Justice Commission heard recently that racism has persisted in Victoria's child protection system, with First Nations children and families continuing to be over-represented. The hearings began with Department of Families, Fairness and Housing acting secretary Argiri Alisandratos being questioned about the impacts that child protection in Victoria has had on First Nations people. Mr Alisandratos acknowledged the over-representation of First People in the Victorian child protection system and admitted that more needed to be done. When Commissioner Kevin Bell asked if his vision to minimise First Nations children in the child protection system was the same vision in respect to all children, Mr Alisandratos admitted that First Peoples faced different experiences because of colonial trauma, which needed to be considered. Since 2016, the rate of First Nations children in the Victorian child protection system has increased by 43 per cent.
The Age reports that an open day at Sandringham College has been tarnished by an act of racist vandalism, with hundreds of students, parents and visitors confronted by the sight of a large swastika scratched into a glass window. The racist graffiti was carved into the external side of a school hall window on the evening before a recent open day, college principal Amy Porter said. More than 1300 people toured the school that day, and a parent alerted Porter to the graffiti in a busy hallway, which included the swastika and the tag TSK. Porter said that she was shocked but was of the firm belief that the vandal was not a college student. “I’m disgusted. We have Jewish staff and Jewish students at our school, we have strong racism training, and I’m firmly of the belief that this has not been done by anyone in our school community.” Porter said that the Nazi symbol would be removed as quickly as possible.
According to yahoo.com, a high school teacher charged with grooming a 15-year-old child exposed her alleged victim to an “indecent picture”, court documents allege. Chelsea Jane Edwards, 28, a teacher at Indooroopilly State High School in Brisbane, Queensland, was charged in March with two counts of grooming and one count of indecent treatment of a child under 16. Police allege in court documents that Ms Edwards had contact with the child on various occasions from July to September 2022, when the grooming offences allegedly commenced. Police allege in court documents that Ms Edwards “wilfully exposed” the child to an indecent photo on a date in September. The documents further allege that she engaged in conduct with the intent to “procure” the child to engage in a sexual act in Queensland between 7 July and 14 September 2022.
ABC News reports that a new acting chief executive of South Australia's child protection department has been named on the day the existing head is stepping down. The South Australian Government has announced that Erma Ranieri, the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment, will take over as acting chief executive of the Department for Child Protection. The current department head, Cathy Taylor, announced that she was resigning in January after holding the role since 2016. In a statement in January, Ms Taylor said that leading the child protection department had been "one of the most rewarding periods" of her career. "I know the transition to a new CE (chief executive) will build on the strengths of the department and its workforce, and I know the workforce will continue to do everything they can to ensure children and young people are safe, supported and have opportunities to thrive," she said.
The Guardian reports that the UK needs at least 11,000 more school nurses to deal with the increasingly complex needs of young people after the pandemic, and help prevent them from developing serious mental health problems, researchers and campaigners say. The researchers surveyed 78 school nurses who shared feelings of exhaustion, stress and low morale, said Dr Georgia Cook, a researcher at Oxford Brookes University. The survey found that three-quarters of school nurses reported an increase in their workload and 79 per cent worried that they were missing vulnerable children. Sharon White, the chief executive of the School and Public Health Nurses Association, which was part of the advisory board for the study, said that there was a “perfect storm” in which a sharp drop in the number of school nurses had combined with rising mental health problems, and safeguarding and child protection needs that had “grown at an exponential rate”.
According to the Toronto Star, a coalition of nearly three dozen environment, health and child-welfare groups launched a call to action to replace Canada’s 50,000 diesel-fuelled school buses with electric models, a push they say will have immediate and long-term health benefits – including psychological benefits. Decades of research has shown that diesel exhaust is a toxic air pollutant, and emerging evidence suggests it can affect brain function and memory. Diesel is also a potent greenhouse gas, and children will bear the greatest burden of climate change’s consequences. Electrifying school buses will help alleviate these harms, advocates say. But maybe most of all, turning school buses carbon-friendly will be a powerful symbol of change – a balm for kids’ climate anxieties. Compared to adults, children are especially vulnerable to the harmful health effects of air pollution, Environment Canada has warned. Children breathe more air per kilogram of body weight and spend more time outdoors, and their bodies and lungs are still developing. Children should play as far away from roadways as possible, the ministry said.
According to the New Zealand Herald, just over half of New Zealand school students regularly attended school in Term 4 last year, figures show. While that’s an improvement on the preceding terms, it remains lower than the same time in 2021 when 65 per cent of students regularly went to school. The Ministry of Education said that the main driver of the 50.6 per cent attendance rate continued to be Covid, resulting in higher levels of absence for both students and staff. Regular attendance is defined as attending greater than 90 per cent of class time or missing no more than one day each fortnight. Last year, the New Zealand Ministry of Education launched an attendance and engagement strategy with 13 priorities to increase attendance and engagement. By 2026, the Ministry wants to increase the number of children attending regularly to 75 per cent.