Minnis Journals

ET News Digest

Your Weekly Education Newsletter

Gifted students falling through the cracks
They’re the forgotten few, the 10% of kids that fall under the gifted heading, and they’re also falling through the cracks as policies for their identification are inconsistent, unreliable and lack accountability says Dr Eileen Slater from Edith Cowan University’s (ECU) School of Education.
The process of identifying exceptional students should begin early, teachers and schools should be looking for indicators of gifted and talented children as soon as they enter the school system at kindergarten or pre-primary. Read more

More women and girls in maths thanks to AMSI
Established as a collaboration of Australia’s university mathematics departments and agencies Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI) membership and global impact have grown. AMSI has sponsored over 200 workshops and hosted an impressive program of international expert speakers to strengthen engagement between the Australian and global mathematics communities, celebrating its 15th birthday this week. Read more

EEF has some good advice for Australia
Like it or not your background has a strong, very strong, bearing on how your education and life will pan out. It’s not particularly fair and the UK’s Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has been doing its honest best to level out the playing field.
A recent success? A couple of years ago the EEF found that giving disadvantaged kids a breakfast as well as lunch would have a strong benefit to how schools ran and as it turns out the strategy has been profoundly effective.
Read more

Why Australian schools and universities need to act more like Amazon
In today’s learning environment, it’s no longer effective for schools, universities and other educational institutions to benchmark academic and business performance only against their peers. Instead, educators should be comparing themselves to all the other business and government organisations that students, parents and staff interact with. If they don’t, there is the very real risk of failing satisfy the needs of increasingly mobile and ‘digital native’ students. Read more

Teachers can be too strict
A bit of noise and chaos should be tolerated in class if not encouraged to promote better concentration and, oddly, conduct.
To boost student mental health and learning, teachers should be trained to focus their attention on positive conduct says a study led by the University of Exeter Medical School. Read more

Students put Scott Morrison under the pump
It's become a tradition at Trinity Grammar and Scott Morrison recently became the fifth sitting Treasurer to answer some tough questions from the school’s economists since the first Q&A in 1983.
Year 12 student Jacob Gadiel took the opportunity to ask whether Mr Morrison would consider contesting leadership of the Liberal party should the opportunity arise, one among several curly questions.
Read more

Sheldon College Repertoire of Sound beats the competition
Sheldon College were voted as National Champions and Place Winner for all ensemble prize categories entered at the 2018 Australian Percussion Eisteddfod recently.
Australian performers converged on Saint Stephen’s College in Queensland to bang out the jams with solos, percussion ensembles and drumlines.
Around 40 participants from Sheldon College received first-place accolades in the Percussion Ensemble I. Read more