Latest Reports & Documents

• Blueprint for Education and Early Childhood Development – Every Child Every Opportunity

• Securing Jobs for the Future – Skills for Victoria

• Vulnerable Youth Framework discussion paper

• Wannik Education Strategy for Indigenous Students

• Interim University Deferment Report

• Regional Youth Commitments

• Glenelg & Southern Grampians LLEN - On Track data 2008

• Effective Strategies to Increase School Completion Report

• Effective Schools are Engaging Schools

Inquiry into Geographical Differences
The above link will take you to the Report that many of participated in April 2008 on the Inquiry into Geographical Differences in the Rate in which Victorian Students Participate in Higher Education. It has beenloaded on-line, it is available to read and download.

Podcasts

School Reporting
Federal Education Minister, Julia Gillard, wants schools to be more accountable, she's impressed by the New York system of school reporting.
Schools are tested and graded and results are published. Britain has a similar process where schools are ranked in League Tables. So does all this testing and reporting deliver better quality education?

School Funding
In the next four years private schools will receive 28 billion dollars using the funding model introduced by the Howard government. Shadow Education Minister Christopher Pyne believes Labor is taking the first steps to reduce funding by placing new conditions on private schools.

Teens & Risk
Dr Michael Ungar is a Canadian family therapist and social worker who thinks that teenagers in particular are too safe for their own good. He argues that young adults need to manage their own risk and responsibility in order to become effective adults.

Kids teaching kids
Arron Wood started getting kids to teach other kids at a small environmental workshop on the banks of the Murray River back in 1999.
His approach uses local environmental issues that matter to those children. It has worked so well that the United Nations now wants to trial it around the world.

Alcohol Awareness
How often do you think about the impact of your drinking on those around you? The Salvation Army wants us all to think about our drinking as part of a wider alcohol awareness campaign. Alcohol advertising is also being targeted, backed by the results of a new telephone poll that suggests a large number of Australians support a reduction in alcohol advertising.

Indigenous Enterprise 
The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs has just finished an inquiry into Indigenous enterprise. Its report sets out structured ways in which Indigenous enterprise could be developed and supported.

Risking our kids
Is our increasing prosperity as a society is actually leaving many children worse rather than better off? Risking our kids, a new documentary, presents the work and views of the passionate research scientist and children's advocate Professor Fiona Stanley.

Flexible Schools 
Half of all high school students have part-time jobs juggling work and study. Is there a need for schools to think differently about their timetables? The issue is the subject of a parliamentary inquiry, inspired in part by the work of Professor Margaret Vickers and the Australian Schools Network.

Trade Training Reform
The Federal Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, has raised concerns about secondary school retention rates, saying they are 'startling and worrying statistics'. A keynote speaker at the ACER conference, Melbourne academic Richard Sweet, says we have to change the institution, not just the curriculum, to encourage early school leavers to stay on. He advocates separate year 11 and 12 colleges with more trade and technical options.

“Life Matters” – ABC Radio National 11 Aug 08