Minnis Journals

For Education Leaders

Redressing Survivorship Bias: Giving voice to the voiceless
Survivorship Bias, or Survivor Bias is the name given to sampling errors that can skew the findings of research. In the Second World War the Americans were keen to research the damaging hits taken by their aeroplanes so they could reinforce those areas, and so they photographed the damage to planes returning from bombing missions over Germany. Abraham Wald pointed out the error of this sampling process as the planes that did not return provided more accurate data. In education, and every other profession, we are complicit in Survivorship Bias each time we positively accepted many of the predetermined judgements made by those who have experienced idiosyncratic pathways to success. Read more

Are school dress codes racist?
James Emmanuel was born and raised in Orange NSW to immigrant African and Sri Lankan parents so he was always going to stand out. That difference was never more stark than when it came to complying with his independent school’s uniform requirements. Read more

More advantages to remote learning found
There is building evidence that remote learning is advantageous to low SES students and allows teachers to spend more time with students who need the attention. Read more

Teachers lack training for dyslexic students
Dyslexia is the most common learning difficulty, yet Australia fails to properly support those with the condition.
Teachers in Australia receive little to no training about dyslexia and the current teaching practice is to wait for children to fail before intervening says the Code REaD Dyslexia Network.
This has led to 19 per cent of Australian Year 4 students not achieving proficient reading levels; this is equivalent to more than 50,000 students per year and 20 per cent of children at risk of reading failure.
Read more

How schools can ensure data remains safe in the age of digital learning and ransomware
Ransomware is one of the more common types of online attack. Read more

Virtual resources from The Jewish Holocaust Centre
The Jewish Holocaust Centre has built a suite of virtual learning resources and customised virtual workshops which will bring its message to a wider audience.
The initiative allowed 87-year-old survivor, Paul Grinwald to meet virtually with up to 20 senior students from the Northern Territory School of Distance Education who were able to ask him questions about how his family survived in France during the Holocaust.
Born in Paris in 1933, He was a young boy when the Germans occupied France and introduced antisemitic laws that excluded Jews from public life. Read more

How schools can leverage online health during COVID-19
Online speech pathology and occupational therapy services are suited to the current situation around the virus, therapy works well remotely with an appropriate support network. Read more