The elephant can only be ignored for so long: we need to talk about academics. Rather like journalists, academics exhibit a profound mismatch between self-image and reality. Everybody has heard by now that British higher education is in a parlous state. Indebted students. Overworked staff on squeezed pay. Misery all round. The question is who Continue reading »
education
The culture wars rumble on in British education with a combination of opaquely funded think tanks and activist groups influencing Government policy
To truly serve all students, we’ll have to rethink how schools ‘do school’. The disability royal commission has reported. The commissioners want greater inclusion of disabled children in mainstream schools, with some wanting to eventually phase out special schools altogether. That could happen, but not without a serious rethink about how schools ‘do school’. The Continue reading »
I am an advocate for inclusion across the board. I find all forms of segregation offensive, students with disabilities should be part of their local school. By taking this stance I am comfortable I would be accepted as a member of the ‘better angels’. However, I wonder if my membership would survive when the ‘angels’ Continue reading »
Effie Webb reports on how radically the academic landscape has changed, in a short space of time, through AI and remote learning
If you haven’t yet listened to Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story, you probably should, now. It’s brilliant, if profoundly depressing. Very brief synopsis: the methods routinely used to teach children to read in the US don’t work well for large numbers of children, and the science of reading has been clear about this for decades. […]
There are twice as many international students from Singapore than there are from Indonesia studying in Australian universities, although Singapore has a population of 6 million and Indonesia has a population of 277 million. In 2019 (before Covid) more students in Australian universities came from Nepal than from any SE Asian country. There are many Continue reading »
The recently concluded Federal Court case brought against Brighton Secondary College in Victoria, resulting in a distressing confirmation of antisemitism during 2013-2020 is a case study in institutional bias against members of a minority group. The insights into institutional behaviour extend far beyond its effects on Jewish students, and remember that the evidence was tested Continue reading »
Australia’s existing relationships and collaborations with China give Australian Industry and consumers a head start in the cost-effective use of some of the most important technologies of the future, including those vital to achieving net zero emissions. Most countries would give anything to be at the forefront of such developments, but Australian University researchers are Continue reading »
Magicians regularly use distraction to trick us into perceiving one thing while another is happening. Politicians use similar tricks to signal concern about public policy problems. Recently there has been an organised campaign to get us to believe that NAPLAN literacy results can all be explained by differences in the methods used to teach reading. Continue reading »