Minnis Journals

ET News Digest

Your Weekly Education Newsletter

High performance schools students most stressed says 15-year survey
School is becoming an increasingly stressful place for students says The Social and Emotional Wellbeing Survey, with the most pronounced unhappiness found among students in schools with high expectations from the institution and their parents.
More than 135,000 students answered the survey administered by You Can Do It! Education and ACER. Read more

Year 7 bully to high school victim
What goes around comes around, for some that is. If you bully, you’re more likely to continue to bully or receive a comeuppance, however the best strategy seems to be to stay clear of the entire thing.
A new study of 1382 students across three cohorts found that kids who were bullies or victims of bullying in Year 7 were at higher risk of doing the same between Year 8 and 11 and Year 7 bullies were also more likely to become victims in high school.
Read more

Hard message for Australians debating soft skills
Creativity, critical thinking, digital literacy, problem-solving and adaptability all fall under the umbrella of ‘capabilities’ but no matter what term is used there are increasingly louder calls for renewed focus on the area in education.
The future of work is looking decidedly different and it’s those soft skills that will give kids the ability to adapt and navigate through muddied waters. Read more

Scholarships proposed to encourage men into teaching
Look around the teaching staff of any school and one thing becomes apparent: a distinct lack of men.
It’s nothing to be joked about, diversity in teaching staff has been identified as a way of diminishing gender roles and providing role models for male and female students.
A leading educator has challenged state governments and the tertiary sector to award dedicated teaching scholarships to men, which might redress a decades-old drought of men in the classroom. Read more

Call for truce in reading wars
It is odd to think of teaching children to read in terms of war but with the conflict between phonics and whole language approaches a war it has been, and a long one at that. The victims? The children that leave school without being fully literate.
Of the many pieces of research on the topic the latest from Castles, Rastle and Nation out of Macquarie University, University of London, University of Oxford and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders,  has plumped for the phonics side and advocates a deeper understanding of the processes behind phonics teaching for those using it. Read more

Using social media for Assessment
I sat in a taxi in Sydney last year, on my way to indulge in another large helping of steamed dumplings in my quest to try all of the top 8 dumpling restaurants Sydney has to offer. (as voted by website Concrete Playground).
The taxi driver was a middle aged gentleman of Greek origin. I asked him about his opinion of Uber. Did he hate them? Had business slowed since their inclusion into the market? etc. He told me to open his glove box. To my surprise, within the glovebox was his Uber identification tag. Read More

Children's reading and writing skills gone to the dogs
Developing children’s reading ability is about confidence as much as smarts and having a gentle, non-judgmental audience to read to helps with building that confidence. Dogs do it very well.
Story Dogs is based on the successful American literacy program, Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.), built around the idea of children and young adolescents reading to dogs.
Read more

Education no guarantee of success
Again, it looks like there is a disconnect between what is being taught and the skills needed to find employment and thrive after education ends.
The New Work Reality Report, the latest in the New Work Order series from Foundation for Young Australians is instructive. It finds that half of 25 year olds aren’t in full-time work, despite nearly 60% having a post-school qualification .
Mitchell Institute Director, Megan O’Connell says the findings are yet another warning that Australia’s education system isn’t working as it should.  Read more

Making young entrepreneurs
It's a sad fact that half of all university leavers are under- or unemployed, but one way of bypassing that is to get inspired and start a business of your own.
startup.business is doing its honest best to make that happen for the hundreds of students that have been exposed to their Entrepreneurial Learning in Action Program which they’re now making available in a condensed five-day format for the school holidays. It will launch on July 16–20 at Reddam House School in Bondi North, Sydney. Read more