The future of education and the challenges currently being faced by the sector will be explored at the inaugural Sydney Morning Herald Schools Summit, which aims to facilitate insightful debate and discussion between policy-makers, educators and key organisations within the field.
Being held on 25 February 2019 at ICC Sydney, Informa Australia has teamed up with SMH to produce this one-day event, which will focus on the theme of ‘Future Frameworks for Challenging Times’.
Key topics will include:
• Education policy and funding
• Student engagement, enrichment and empowerment
• Student wellbeing and resilience
• Inclusive education
• Preparing students for future work requirements
• AI and robotics in the classroom
• The future of selective schools
• What it means to be an impactful teacher
• The data driven classroom
• The skills and attributes of the teacher of tomorrow
• Future curriculum
• Standardised testing: the future of NAPLAN, HSC and ATAR
• School shopping and school choice
• Sharing school and community facilities
• Delivering schools under considerable population pressures and changing demographics
• Innovative school and classroom design and delivery
Minister for Education and Training, the Hon. Dan Tehan MP; NSW Minister for Education The Hon Robert Stokes MP; and NSW Shadow Minister for Education, Mr Jihad Dib MP; and Secretary at the NSW Department of Education Mark Scott AO; will present at the event as keynote speakers.
A variety of engaging and insightful speakers will also take to the stage, including well known mathematician Eddie Woo, NESA CEO David de Carvalho, Director of the Gonski Institute for Education UNSW Professor Adrian Piccoli, and Grattan Institute Director Peter Goss, among many others.
Eddie Woo’s Wootube is a prime example of an everyday teacher utilising technology to improve student engagement. His YouTube videos now boast more than 460,000 subscribers. The positive impact Wootube has had on students all over the globe highlights the potential ways in which technological advancements could improve student engagement and learning outcomes.
“Teachers are no longer there to just fill students heads with facts, we’re there to help them view the world in a different way. Calculators and computers used to be job descriptors, those jobs have now been replaced by technology. The emphasis is now how we will use the calculator, computers are for answers and humans are for questions,” Mr Woo says.
“Teachers don’t teach subjects, they teach students. The primary job of an educator is to learn what makes your students tick. I often have students come in saying ‘I’m just not a maths person’. I accept their opinion but then I talk to them to work out what they love, what they hate, what’s important to them. Then I can find a way that mathematics connects to them and build that rapport with them on that.
“If you don’t like one part, let me show you a different part, expose students to the different aspects of mathematics, if it’s not chapter 10 maybe it’s chapter 23. There will be a point of contact between every student and a subject, you just have to find it.”
The event will also include a Q&A with the Hon Robert Stokes and Jihad Dib and a panel discussion on curriculum which will be live-streamed in partnership with NESA.
Accredited by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), the SMH Schools Summit will contribute eight hours of Personal Development points towards maintaining Proficient Teacher Accreditation in NSW.