Minnis Journals

ET News Digest

Your Weekly Education Newsletter

Secret ATAR report ordered destroyed
A secret report showing that students with low ATAR scores are being recruited into Initial Teacher Education (ITE) was reportedly ordered destroyed by the University of Sydney.
According to new media, the confidential report revealed that some prospective teaching students had an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) that was as low as zero to 19 – far below the Federal Government's official data. Read more

Uni courses for the most profitable career
The more things change the more they don’t, especially when it comes to graduate earning potential says the Grattan Institute’s Mapping Australian Higher Education report.
Solid professions like nursing continued to see pay levels on the up while commerce and science only fared slightly better than humanities and performing arts graduates.
Education and nursing qualifications led to good-quality jobs, with a high proportion of graduates in employment. Read more

Who wins in new funding model?
It’s now settled, parents’ incomes will be the basis of funding provided to schools, the approach is fairer but some sectors will be better off than others. There is time for work to be done on the arrangement though as a generous two years has been given for implementation.
The AEU for one is not happy and has asserted that the nation’s 2.5 million public school students had been abandoned by the Morrison government. Read more

Mentoring helps low SES students win at life
The ABCN Foundation has been working with students from low-SES schools since 2005 and is the only organisation of its kind to offer the combination of mentoring and financial support.
It works well: in 2017 87% of the 2014-cohort of scholarship students completed the program. Of these students, 100% are engaged in employment, tertiary education or training (compared to 59% of disadvantaged students). Read more

Recommendations to streamline teaching careers
An extensive review of teacher registration will see the introduction of streamlining processes so that teachers can seamlessly transfer across the nation, all early childhood teachers brought into teacher registration, and stronger links between teacher registration and the different career stages of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (Teacher Standards). Read more

The Territory Government reinvigorates school-based policing
The Territory Government has reinvigorated school-based policing aiming to address issues raised during the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory with a greater focus on safety, youth engagement and youth diversion in keeping with best practice models developed in similar jurisdictions.
The new model was designed in collaboration with the education department, government and the police. Read more

High ATARs not everything: top principal
Principal Brad Gaynor thinks concern about ATARS needed to be matched with understanding of the emotional and social qualities that teachers require and ATAR results are “not everything” when selecting future teachers.
Gaynor of Holy Spirit Catholic Primary School in Canberra who recently won Australia’s best non-government primary school principal at the Australian Education Awards said you need to have good relational skills and you need to be well-rounded. A high ATAR does not mean you will definitely be a good teacher. Read more

Matific helps to incorporate Te Reo Māori in New Zealand Schools
Matific, the game-based maths learning resource, will assist New Zealand to incorporate the Te Reo Māori language into their maths curriculum via a translation of its online program.
Māori today accounts for almost 15% of the population in New Zealand, but the language has remained a minority language for over 130 years. The Te Reo version has been translated by Hēmi Kelly from Auckland University of Technology. Read more