Minnis Journals

ET News Digest

Your Weekly Education Newsletter

Principals physically healthy, mentally not so much
Principals have general good health, don't drink too much and by and large don’t need medication to relieve stress, but despite that their wellbeing scored generally below the general population.
Their causes of stress have been generally unchanged over time but with up ticks in some areas; principals continue to complain of the sheer quantity of work, and a lack of time to focus on teaching and learning. Read more

Teachers to have their say on the profession in forums next week
A federal parliamentary committee enquiring about the status of the teaching profession will hold meetings next week hoping to identify what it takes for Australia to have a world-class education system.  
"Australia's teachers inspire, engage and challenge students to be the best they can. Although there are more teachers in Australia than ever, the attrition rate from the profession is rising," Chair Andrew Laming MP said.  Read more

How do schools use funds? No one really knows
The Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit of the Parliament has criticised a lack of transparency and accountability about the way school funding is spent saying it is caused by sub-par administration.
As funding is allocated on a needs-based model, not knowing how the money is being spent hobbles that process and renders it a guessing game. Read more

Australian Christian College principal spending a day walking in the shoes of a student
Principal Brendan Corr from ACC Marsden Park has signed up for an interesting experience, he is participating in the international Shadow a Student Challenge where principals and teachers from around the world are invited to spend a day shadowing the movements of a school student.
The Shadow a Student Challenge is part of an initiative called School Retool, a professional development fellowship that helps school leaders redesign their school cultures. Read more

In small groups, leadership won by performing
If you get it right more often than not, you’re probably leadership material, at least in a small group. It’s kind of logical, if your ideas and information are usually correct others will tend to defer to your judgement and in that way appoint you as a leader.
This was the conclusion of experiments in the area and set apart the dynamic of a small group from that of a larger one where the majority or consensus seems to hold more sway. Read more

NAPLAN data misuse must be looked at
The Adelaide Advertiser newspaper recently received a slap for putting together league tables of school performance based on NAPLAN scores, raising the issue of misuse of the data on MySchool.
The league tables of NAPLAN performance between South Australia public schools published in the article ‘Which South Australian public schools are NAPLAN high achievers' were simplistic and also breached the Terms of Use of the website.
Australian Education Union (AEU) South Australia Branch President Howard Spreadbury said that the misuse of the data could have negative consequences for students, teachers and parents. Read more

Almost half kids accessed internet porn over the school holidays
You know what they say about idle hands and the Christmas holidays made for plenty of mischief; almost half of Australia’s children under 18 years of age attempted to access pornography during the 2018–19 school holidays.
The rates of porn access were quite even across all the age groups, troublingly 43% of kids aged 0–8 accessed porn, 45% of 8–12-year-olds, 56% of 12–15-year-olds and 51% of 15–18-year-olds did the same. Read more

Wellbeing course has 99% success rate
The Staff Wellbeing Toolkit from NESLI is something that actually works to boost happiness in educators.
The impact report, which surveyed over 7000 participants, found that 98% of the participants reported an increase in their wellbeing and social capital with the greatest impact upon participants’ physical health and their levels of optimism.
NESLI‘s approach is holistic, programs cultivate positive patterns of thinking and feeling. Read more