A love letter to Newcastle: new century, new vision
Long gone are the steel works, and the coalfields are on notice. Newcastle is a city in transition. Some of you may have already read Matt Dickson’s homage to Newcastle in The Guardian. In it, he offers a historical panorama from the time of Awabakal land, through colonisation to an optimistic glimpse of Newcastle’s future. […]
The Complexity of Teaching
“Teaching and teachers can profoundly change and significantly enhance lives.” Marcia Devlin, CEO of the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership wrote an opinion piece recently about the status and role of the teaching profession. At the end of a complex Term 1 2022, three years into the pandemic, I’d also like to add my […]
Managing Smartphones in Schools
The misuse and impact of digital devices and smartphones by school students has been reported in a series of articles recently in the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD. In 2022, a leading independent day and boarding school for boys in Sydney made a policy decision to stop students from bringing their own laptops to school. According to an […]
The Seasons of COVID-19
At the start of 2022, I wrote a blog inspired by Botticelli’s’ stunning fifteenth century artwork, Primavera which not only acts as an allegory for Spring but represents the beauty, innovation, and complexity of a new era. I reflected on the way The Black Death radically disrupted society with many historians suggesting that the social, political, economic, […]
McCrindle – ‘Future of Work’ report, 2022
The social researching firm, McCrindle, recently published its ‘Future of Work’ report for 2022. As usual, their enormous survey of students, teachers and parents garnered some interesting results, which schools like ours would be wise to consider. Across Australia, we see a fair degree of parental choice across three major school sectors, with roughly 16.6% […]
Why is there a shortage of teachers … and how can we help?
We live in a world where criticism comes more easily to many than praise, and a world where media reports frame the way we think. Many of us who have been in the education space for a long time would know that we rarely hear students today saying “I want to be a teacher.” In […]
The Changing University Sector – The Rise of Early Entry
As Year 12 complete their Trial examinations this week, the ‘new norm’ of university entry is picking up pace. While the ATAR is still the main method of selection used by most universities, many institutions are now offering early entry schemes for school leavers and many students are taking advantage of these opportunities. A quick […]
Internet Gaming – A Problem for Young People, Families and Schools?
The online journal, School Governance, recently published an article by Elita Bird discussing the implications for schools of online gaming addictions which may lead to the development in adolescents of Internet Gaming Disorder or IGD (Bird, 2022). This article followed on from another recent article by Jordan Baker in The Age, titled “Problem gaming leading to […]
Subject Selection and the Search for Band Six
The Sydney Morning Herald’s (SMH) Education Editor wrote that HSC students appear to be ‘ditching’ difficult subjects in pursuit of a Band Six mark – meaning a mark above 90%. There is a great deal of irony in the SMH publishing an alarming article about this, given that it is the same Herald which publishes the […]
Why the HSC Matters
David Cross, CEO of Blueprint Institute, recently published a thought-provoking opinion piece in the SMH* on the HSC titled – Stop saying the HSC doesn’t matter. It does. The article delves into the impact of the plethora of voices who proclaim that “the HSC does not matter.” This sentiment is expressed frequently at this time of the […]
