Minnis Journals

ET News Digest

Your Weekly Education Newsletter

Two-way conversation essential for development
Language is crucial to how children grow, develop and learn and for language development to be most effective there must be two-way conversation between the kids and other kids and their teachers.
Researchers found that the speech children heard from other children was positively related to their own language use, that is children who heard the most from their peers learn more new words and vocalised more during the course of the year. Read more

Robots, Martians and scientists to invade classrooms
Dancing robots, tales from the high seas and news from outer space all made their way into more than 350 Australian classrooms as part of the CSIRO-led STEM in Schools event.
The event, which will help kick off National Science Week (August 11–19) brings real-world science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) into the classroom in an effort to increase student engagement and participation in STEM subjects.
Read more

Migrant school cleaners among most vulnerable
The Fair Work Ombudsman has forced Veracity Property Services Pty Ltd to improve compliance and back-pay workers.
The company engaged two Sri Lankan workers as part of its subcontract to provide cleaning services to a southeast Melbourne government school. The workers held a skilled 457 visa and bridging visa. Read more

Teachers enlisted to train fussy eaters
Fussy eaters are hard to win over and it takes a combined effort shared between parents, carers, grandparents and teachers to help the most fussy eaters to eat healthy, varied diets during their preschool and early school years, nutritionists say.
Fussy eaters can lapse into bad eating habits that continue from 3–7 during important years for physical and learning development. It's all about patience and persistence with children taking 10 to 15 tries of a food before they like it. Read more

NAPLAN online debacle needs explaining says AEU
NAPLAN’s migration to the web has hit a snag with summary results for this year’s being delayed as there are concerns the online test results cannot be compared to the results from the paper tests. Around one million students sat NAPLAN tests in May with almost 200,000 doing the test online for the first time.
Australian Education Union Federal President Correna Haythorpe said Min Simon Birmingham had been repeatedly warned that the online and paper test results could not be compared. Read more

Echuca school upgrades and special school
The Vic Government will invest $16.7 million to build the next two stages of the Echuca Regeneration Project, which includes more facilities at the new Echuca Twin Rivers Primary School and a new Echuca P-12 Special School to be located at the same site.
Echuca students have benefitted from an $11 million investment to merge Echuca South and Echuca West primary schools as part of the Echuca Regeneration Project.
Read more

Turnbull government cuts $500 million in early childhood funding
The early years are fundamental to learning but the Turnbull government doesn't seem to share that opinion as it plans to cut nearly $500 million in funding to the early childhood education sector (ECE).
Federal government spending on the Universal Access to Early Childhood Education agreement will end in 2020. Reports also showed the government plans to cut the National Quality Framework program for early childhood education. Read more