Category: Education

Private schools have seized on an opportunity provided by an Amendment Bill before the Parliament to attempt to lock-in billions in Commonwealth over-funding for years to come. (more…)

Gaza has been flattened by Israeli attacks. Ninety per cent of schools have been damaged, or destroyed. Two thirds of schools, 285 of them, have been completely destroyed. All universities have been destroyed. The United Nations has called Israel’s deliberate targeting of Gaza’s education infrastructure, scholasticide. (more…)

When leaving school at seventeen, I did not expect that my participation in the Australian school system would resume; or that adult life would bring opportunities to observe and experience it from a wide range of perspectives. (more…)

What are we to make of Peter Dutton’s outrageous demand that Mark Scott, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, should resign? It surely represents an assault on all universities, and on the very idea of a university education as a standard bearer for Australian culture. (more…)

Australian universities are starved of funds and forced to operate as commercial entities focused on profit, not the pursuit of knowledge. (more…)

It now seems clear that Australian universities have relied too heavily on international student income as a significant financial cushion. This revenue has also created substantial wealth in some institutions, with net asset holdings now at record levels. For many other smaller institutions, it has been the lifeline for sustainability. (more…)

The Australian Education Union (AEU) has compared public funding going to private schools with amounts going to similar government schools. Its revelations are alarming and should be game-changing. One private school peak group has cried foul, but the union is on the money. So what should happen next? (more…)

 Among a group of corporations which also includes Boeing and BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin is a particular target for this action. Though principled and consistent, it has proved to be a futile exercise in protest; worse, it is likely to remain so. (more…)

The American poet e.e. cummings once observed that good teachers provide a mirror for their students, reflecting back to them valuable attributes that hitherto they’ve not been able to recognise for themselves. This precious pedagogical gift is treated with indifference — even contempt — by far too many Australian politicians, bureaucrats, opinionated media aficionados, and parents. (more…)

The obsession of universities with growth through international rankings that attract fee-paying overseas students has let Australia fall behind in its ability to create new, breakthrough scientific knowledge. Universities talk about “punching above their weight” in publication output, but they have generated only four breakthrough discoveries in the past 25 years. (more…)

As a beginning teacher in the year 2000, and the father of a young child, the question, ‘Do I use whole language or phonics?’ did not occur to me. Instinctively, it made sense that when attempting to pronounce a new word one had to know something of the connection to the sounds we make and the letter symbols we see. I was unaware then of the reading wars but I was aware that some educational psychologists were advocating that phonics and explicit teaching of the alphabet code inform early reading instruction. (more…)

Successive federal governments have propelled a ‘backdoor privatisation’ of Australian universities. It’s shameful. (more…)

The new school funding agreement between the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments brings a much needed boost to public schools funding. However, the claims by the Federal Education Minister, the NT Chief Minister and the NT Education Minister that Territory public schools will be fully funded by 2029 is a deliberate falsehood, that is, a lie.
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