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.

AUSTRALIA

Government to push Labor on child abuse crackdown

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Coalition will ask MPs to vote on tougher laws for child sex offences when Parliament resumes this week in a crackdown on paedophiles that is set to create headaches for Labor, given the party's longstanding opposition to mandatory sentencing. The Coalition says the new laws are needed because "lenient sentencing practices" are not protecting the community from paedophiles, noting 28 per cent of those convicted of federal offences last year did not spend any time in jail. The Government tried unsuccessfully to legislate the changes in the last Parliament. The Bill does not deal with all sex abuse cases, many of which come under state laws. Federal laws deal with offences such as travelling overseas for sex tourism and online offences, such as accessing or transmitting child abuse material, or using a carriage service to groom or abuse a child.

Soaring school fees give rise to new financial products

According to the Financial Review, School Fee Protect Insurance opened for business last year as school-fee inflation entered its 10th year of running at twice the rate of wage growth. The managing director of School Fee Protect Insurance, Johnny Marchant, said he's worked in insurance all his life but the idea to offer protection solely against the inability to pay fees came to him when he saw his own children's fees going through the roof. He agreed the market is a small one but the business model was sound enough to be taken on by QBE as an underwriter and Steadfast Group as brokers – one of the biggest in the country. The lumpiness of school fees affects lenders as well. Edstart, which finances school fees, said a lot of its business was smoothing out the peaks and troughs. Chief executive Jack Stevens said borrowing for school fees was more common because of the large sums involved and given a decade of fee inflation runs at double the CPI. Edstart earns income from transaction fees on short-term loans and interest on time-extended loans.

NAPLAN results to be demoted on MySchool website

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, parents, students and educators will have less information on Australia's student literacy and numeracy testing program NAPLAN under a planned revamp of school information site MySchool. The changes have been prompted by a recent review that found NAPLAN results were too prominent on MySchool and that data on student improvement was overshadowed by overall school results. David de Carvalho, CEO of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which administers NAPLAN and MySchool, said ACARA had clear instructions from education ministers. "It's the school comparisons issue I think that is causing the most angst amongst principals and school leaders, resulting in some of the high-stakes nature of the test and perhaps having some unintended consequences in terms of pedagogy." Changes to MySchool would alleviate this, he said, and were welcomed by Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan.

Students who are disadvantaged by ATAR are “very, very rare”: UAC

According to the Brisbane Times, students who do very well in English but constantly struggle in maths are rumoured to be common but are actually very rare. In reality, a student who achieves high marks in English is also likely to do well in maths, as well as modern history, chemistry and economics, new research by the Universities Admissions Centre has found. The correlation between marks is strongest for similar types of subjects but also exists across entirely different fields of study and may disprove the idea that the HSC and ATAR are disadvantaging a large group of students who perform very well in some areas but poorly in others. However, the majority of university entrants are currently applying and receiving offers without an ATAR, and educators and businesses have called for the measure to be scrapped. More than 58 per cent of students who received a university offer last year did not use an ATAR to apply, according to the latest Department of Education figures.

“Surprise, blessing, gift”: Home schooling numbers reach record

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Dr Rebecca English, from QUT's Faculty of Education, said her research had found that parents decided to home school after their child was bullied or misdiagnosed and then refused to go to school. A survey of 441 home schoolers by support group the Home Education Network found home schoolers do so because they believe they could do a better job, want to be with their children, to offer a tailored education, to help with diverse learning needs, inadequate provisions at school, religious convictions and a child's physical or sexual abuse. Sue Wight, from Home Education Network, said parents rushed to home schooling in 2017 to avoid new rules that require families to submit a learning plan, detailing subject matter, and where and when that instruction would take place. Research by Edith Cowan University's Kate Burton and Eileen Slater found that concern over the level of socialisation among home-schooled children was "not grounded in reality".

UNESCO scientist calls for review of religious instruction in schools

The Brisbane Times reports that Queensland's Education Department should review its policy on religious instruction classes in schools and instead offer broader studies on world religions, a UNESCO research scientist will tell Education Minister Grace Grace. Melbourne Professor Anna Halafoff is a senior lecturer in sociology and a research assistant for UNESCO's chair in inter-religious and intercultural relations at Deakin University. Her latest research into Australia's Generation Z teenagers shows they have more positive views of Australia's diverse population and would benefit from better education about the world's religions. In 2015, Victoria switched from volunteer-based faith groups – not teachers – providing single-faith classes to broader studies of the world's religions. Victoria's teachers now offer World Views and Religions classes as part of the curriculum's humanities program. On October 17 the Queensland Government will provide its answer to a petition from Queensland Parents for Secular State Schools calling for a review of the government's religious instruction policy.

Campaigners against child sex abuse, masked brothers A and B, nominated for Pride of Australia Awards

According to The Advertiser, over the past 12 months, two brothers – known as “A” and “B” – have staged a high profile, yet utterly anonymous, campaign against monsters who fracture innocent childhoods. In doing so, they sparked a statewide conversation about child abuse and victims’ rights that prompted legal change and banned predators from home detention sentences. The brothers first donned their masks to confront Vivian Frederick Deboo – who sexually abused them as children – outside court. To protest against a home-detention sentence, they created a “Monster’s Walk” through which he had to navigate to reach his hearing. Their campaign caught the attention of visiting rockers Bon Jovi, who dedicated part of their Adelaide concert to the duo. Once Deboo had been jailed and state law changed, the brothers turned their attention to supporting Australia’s 1.4 million child-abuse survivors in their own battles. Last week, Brother “A” teamed with former NT attorney-general John Elferink to create The Sabre Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation helping survivors sue their abusers for compensation.

George Pell's appeal bid based on “false premise”, Victorian prosecutors tell High Court

According to the ABC News, Victorian Prosecutors have said there is no justification for the High Court to grant special leave for Cardinal George Pell to appeal against his child sexual abuse convictions. Pell's High Court application challenges the preference for the complainant's evidence by the majority of the Court of Appeal. His lawyers will tell the High Court their belief in the complainant was an error that would have required him to show the offending was impossible. But documents filed by the DPP said there was no error, and Pell's argument was based on inaccurate assertions. "There was no reversal of the onus nor lowering of the standard of proof by the majority," the documents said. "The [special leave application] proceeds on the false premise that a complainant's account bears little or no weight on the independent assessment of the evidence." The prosecutors also said Pell's case misconstrued the facts. The special leave application could be dealt with on the written submissions, or be the subject of a short hearing, before the court decides whether a full bench hearing is justified.

“You can't study chemistry” and other barriers faced by women from non-English speaking backgrounds

According to the ABC News, "You can't study chemistry." That was what a well-meaning teacher told Angela Bijimba, a Malawi refugee, but now she is studying biomedical science and is on her way to becoming a doctor. In a deep conversation about race, discrimination, and culture with women in Ballarat, Ms Bijimba said she found others had similarly battled low expectations from the broader community. Facilitated by the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY) and Our Watch — an organisation designed to drive change in the practices that lead to family violence — facilitated a deep conversation about race, discrimination, and culture with women in Ballarat that forms part of the Lead Yourself, Lead Others (LYLO) program. Designed by women from refugee and migrant backgrounds, it aims to tackle barriers such as language, racism, and discrimination in education and employment. Program ambassador, Khadija Gbla, said it was launched in Melbourne earlier this year and was now being replicated in regional Victoria, with plans to expand to other states.

Opinion: Real change demands real engagement

According to an article in The Educator, over the past few years, funding has been a key issue for education, along with improving outcomes for all children in schools. It is therefore welcome that the NSW Parliament is holding inquiry hearings into “Measurement and outcome-based funding in New South Wales schools”. This inquiry will explore the key issues and fundamental changes needed to improve the education of children. Issues such as child protection, assessment, teacher employment conditions, school systems, accountability, support for vulnerable children, measurement of learning and teaching will all be covered; and no doubt additional issues will arise. With such fundamental and constant media commentary and discussion it is therefore somewhat surprising that there were only 20 submissions to the Inquiry. If stakeholders in education want change, they need to engage, otherwise they are betraying their principles and those whom they claim to represent.

INTERNATIONAL

“A fear of failure”: 12-year-old's insane routine before and after school (Singapore)

Yahoo News reports that Singapore has some of the highest achieving students in the world when it comes to reading, maths and science, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures students across the world through a standardised test. But children as young as 12 are feeling the pressure to maintain good grades, with some studying from 7am to 9pm each day. SBS program Dateline visited Singapore with a dozen Australian high school teachers to uncover why it had the best education system, but discovered some students had a lack of school and life balance, spending most of their days packed into private tuition centres. SBS presenter Janice Petersen explained to Yahoo News Australia that Singapore separated teenage students into three categories once they reached high school. However these streams are causing anxiety in some students who feel the pressure to keep up.

Mapping girls’ right to an education (Global)

The World Education Blog reports that UNESCO’s Her Education Rights Atlas (HER Atlas) is designed to measure the degree of protection of girls’ and women’s education rights in national legal frameworks. Her Atlas was launched at the G7 France/UNESCO international conference on girls’ education in July and is part of UNESCO’s ‘Her education, our future’ Initiative. The Atlas provides the latest information on the status of girls’ and women’s right to education in countries’ constitutions, legislation and regulations, serving as a strong monitoring and advocacy tool. More than 70 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to education is still not realised for many girls and women worldwide. Despite numerous reaffirmations by the international community of its strong commitment to achieve gender equality in education and the considerable progress in recent decades, poverty, pregnancy, early marriage, gender-based violence and traditional attitudes are among the many obstacles that stand in the way of girls and women fully exercising their right to participate in, complete and benefit from education.