We know the announcement of the federal election is imminent.
As parents education matters. It affects our children's future. We all want children to have access to a quality education.
On top of this, parents have been more involved in our children's education over the past two years than ever before and we are still navigating Covid outbreaks, isolation and testing, while trying to support our kid's continuity of education.
All parents now have a far greater appreciation of what our kids learn at school and the work that teachers do. It will be interesting to see if and how this greater engagement in our children's education is reflected in proposed education policy and discussion in the 2022 election.
The public and political debates about how to improve education are already gathering steam.
A Grattan Institute article last week focussed on funding all schools to the agreed level, and recognising and rewarding talented teachers.
While the Acting Federal Education Minister Stuart Robert has blamed “dud” public school teachers for dragging down academic results.
In his speech at a national independent schools conference late last week, he praised independent schools for employing quality teachers but suggested this sent the “bottom 10 per cent of teachers dragging the chain” into the government system and said Australia’s international benchmark test results would improve if this “brutal reality” was confronted. This week he's said that his comments were 'designed to be provocative.'Labor has highlighted its support for consent education and digital awareness in its announcements so far.An interesting look at the key education issues and how parents can influence the political debate raises some interesting points - The Conversation 'If only politicians focused on the school issues that matter. This election is a chance to get them to do that'.The APC team will endeavour to share developments in the education debate as it develops. Follow us on our Facebook page for regular updates.In other news, changes to the way NAPLAN results are reported on My School, which have just been updated for the first time in two years, make it easier for parents to understand the progress students and schools have made. You can read our full report here.It was also announced that NAPLAN is moving to Term 1 from next year. More details here.But details of how the History Curriculum is going to be updated as part of the Australian Curriculum Review are still to be finalised. I made my personal views very clear on this topic in my blog, and am very interested to see what is decided. We'll of course share details when they're announced.Please let us know if there are any issues you'd like to know more about or would like us to get involved in (before, during or after the election). We are always happy to hear from parents.
