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Section: EDUCATION

  • EDUCATION

    What should anti-discrimination exemptions look like?

    • Michael Furtado
    • 20 March 2024

    As challenges to anti-discrimination exemptions are likely to persist within Catholic education, how can the government and religious institutions collaborate effectively to balance the freedom of expressing religious beliefs with safeguarding the rights and freedoms of everyone involved?

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  • EDUCATION

    Declining staff-to-student ratios reveal sorry state of higher ed

    • Erica Cervini
    • 06 March 2024

    By 2012, when the federal government first started reporting on staff-to-student ratios in universities, there was one academic for every 20 students. The most recent data, from 2021, shows that figure had increased to 23. As Australian students return for the new academic year, it will surely come as no surprise to find that ratio has worsened.

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  • EDUCATION

    Why we need a new approach to school bullying

    • Ben Lohmeyer
    • 07 February 2024
    2 Comments

    In a hierarchical society, we routinely celebrate and reward various dominating and competitive behaviour. When children and young people replicate this in the playground, we call it bullying. Anti-bullying measures may be more effective shifting the focus away from perpetrators and on the social and institutional context. 

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  • EDUCATION

    Welcome to school

    • Michael McGirr
    • 25 January 2024
    3 Comments

    It is usual to focus on kids starting school. Let’s also spare a thought for the hundreds who are about to start their careers as classroom teachers. They are entering a career that has never been more important and never been less understood. I fear it is being strangled to death.

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  • EDUCATION

    The great divide: ATAR results offer a snapshot of inequality in Australian education

    • Erica Cervini
    • 13 December 2023
    3 Comments

    As Australian students receive their year-end academic results, a stark educational divide comes into focus, with high-fee-paying private and selective government schools leading the ranks. This trend highlights significant socio-economic disparities across the country, raising urgent questions about the accessibility and true cost of academic excellence in a nation grappling with inequality.

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  • EDUCATION

    The myths of school funding

    • Chris Curtis
    • 29 November 2023
    6 Comments

    Australian school funding is full of common misconceptions, and creating a rational, just, and effective school funding model requires cutting through media-driven inaccuracies to understand the real needs of Australian students and schools.

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  • EDUCATION

    How should my class reckon with the referendum?

    • Helena Kadmos
    • 26 October 2023
    2 Comments

    In the wake of the referendum, how can a curriculum be used to foster a sense of reflection, understanding, and dialogue among young minds? As classrooms become the backdrop for conversations around Indigenous voices, democracy, and social change, what does it mean to truly listen?

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  • EDUCATION

    Inclusion in education? Not without a revolution first

    • Michele Freeman
    • 11 October 2023
    6 Comments

    With an education system in crisis, teachers on the front lines face daunting challenges as they strive for true inclusion. With classrooms overwhelmed and resources dwindling, educators reimagine a system that both listens to its educators and prioritises the well-being and growth of every student.

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  • EDUCATION

    A tale of two school systems

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 11 October 2023
    9 Comments

    Parents face a complex choice: public or private schooling? Overcrowded public classrooms contrast with well-funded private institutions, revealing inequalities in educational resources. Australia's educational landscape reveals not just a tale of two school systems but the underlying values and priorities of a nation.

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  • EDUCATION

    Widening the Catholic educational tent

    • Michael Furtado
    • 28 September 2023
    38 Comments

    As Australia grapples with educational inequality, those in the Catholic education system must ask: how do we test for a clear commitment to Catholic Social Teaching and the seminal role it plays in enunciating the guiding principles of Catholic education, particularly in regard to it being offered, ‘first and foremost … to the poor’?

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  • EDUCATION

    Keys to closing the education gap

    • Anthony Dillon
    • 10 August 2023
    1 Comment

    We need to change the language from improving 'attendance' to improving 'engagement' — to reflect that schools need to be places of learning for Indigenous children, not just minding centres, and that learning comes with engagement. (From 2019)

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  • EDUCATION

    Teal candidates and the Catholic vote

    • Chris Middleton
    • 23 May 2022
    5 Comments

    Perhaps the most dramatic individual result of the Federal election was that Menzies’s seat, Kooyong, has fallen to a Teal independent, Dr Monique Ryan. Xavier College sits in the Kooyong electorate, and Dr Ryan is a parent at the College. Dr Ryan proved to be an impressive candidate who ran as a good a local campaign as I have ever seen. It was marked by a strong engagement by many locals, and especially among professional women, and older residents.

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