With the arrival of the new Premier in NSW, Chris Minns, has come a hasty announcement of “sweeping” mobile phone bans to be introduced “from day 1, term 4” across all NSW public schools this year. The move follows similar policies in all other states, except Queensland and the ACT. The goal of the ban? […]
By Melanie Ralph Last week, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet fronted the media to apologise for wearing a Nazi costume to his 21st birthday party 20 years ago in 2003. Calling it a “terrible, terrible mistake,” the premier’s “genuine hope” is that “good will come of this.” Whether you are forgiving enough to view […]
By Melanie Ralph Suites of ready-made resources may be a crutch for some teachers, but we stand to lose the best and brightest if we pursue more top-down reforms that would deskill teachers and kick a struggling profession while it’s already down. Recently, think tank The Grattan Institute published a report titled Ending the lesson […]
Article published on ABC, Thu 19 May 2022 https://www.abc.net.au/religion/labors-pitch-to-improve-teaching-is-tragically-misguided/13890036 Amid the cacophony of noise that the 2022 federal election campaign has generated, Labor has tried to respond to alarming teacher shortages and the so-called “disaster” of student test scores by pledging to “pay students who get an ATAR of 80 or over up to $12,000 a year if they […]
By Melanie Ralph Published on ABC 22 Mar 2022. Link here: https://www.abc.net.au/religion/modest-proposal-for-addressing-the-teacher-shortage/13807648 This term in Queensland, teachers have navigated a further wave of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, followed by devastating floods that have left many families without a home. Beyond Queensland, teachers across the country have summoned a kind of Sisyphean strength over the […]
By Melanie Ralph. Amid many pressing issues of 2021, you would be forgiven for missing some big news published in a full page spread of The Australian newspaper back in August. Noel Pearson, academic and community leader, boldly declared that the “teaching debate” has ended “once and for always.” The ‘debate’ Pearson refers to is […]
By Melanie Ralph. Newsflash: gay teachers can be fired. No, this is not some shocking story from homophobic Southern American states, or an ‘L.G.B.T free’ town in Poland. This is here in Australia. In 2021. Alexandra Greyson, a lawyer from Maurice Blackburn, puts it simply: “Religious educational institutions can discriminate on the basis of […]
By Melanie Ralph As much as politicians would like to believe that education is about ‘teaching the basics’, the truth is that not only has the profession become more complex, but as a result, teacher workloads have increased. In a survey by the Queensland College of Teachers about attrition rates of graduate teachers, respondents who […]
By Melanie Ralph Last year, along with many other Queensland teachers, I applied to be accredited as a Highly Accomplished Teacher (HAT). The certification involves the submission of a portfolio which is annotated against the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST), as well as classroom observations. At Stage 1, the portfolio is assessed by […]
An interest of mine as a teacher is cultivating a culture of reading in my classroom. I believe the lack of time devoted to reading in schools is underpinned by an assumption that students read at home. Therefore, many teachers absolve themselves of the responsibility to ensure reading becomes part of students’ lifestyles and is […]
Melanie Ralph 