The Last Word offers opinion pieces from a series of education experts, who discuss an issue or trend impacting schools, students and the education sector in Australia. They also outline their views, advice and where relevant, offer solutions they believe can help alleviate or prevent a current problem within the primary or secondary education space.
The global COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented disruption to Australia’s system of classroom-based learning, forcing teachers to rapidly adapt to new methods of digital pedagogy, almost overnight, writes Andrew Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Education Services.
David De Carvalho, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Curriculum, sheds lights on the importance of students understanding Australia’s democracy.
By David de Carvalho, CEO of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA).
We’ve grown accustomed to hearing that we are ‘living in interesting times’, as things are turned upside down by COVID-19. The saying “may you live in interesting times” was erroneously claimed, in an early and ironic example of fake news, to be a proverb of Chinese origin. Read more
The Australian Secondary Principals’ Association partnered with Dr Amanda Heffernan from Monash University to investigate the current issues facing secondary school principals in Australia’s public schools. Read more
Let’s set the record straight. Despite what ill-informed parts of the media portrayed as ‘home learning’ being the norm at the end of Term 1 and beginning of Term 2 in most states and territories, it was most certainly not the case. Schools were still open in most cases, some students of both essential workers and other parents were still in attendance, and ‘online learning’ was in fact the norm. Although some parents were able to play a more active role in the learning of their children, behind the scenes, teachers and diversity supports were hard at work maintaining relationships to ensure the continued learning of the students in their care. Read more
