The annual event, which promotes literacy, is celebrating 80 years as part of Australian school life
Book Week is in full swing, marking it’s 80th year celebrating all things reading and literacy for Australia’s schoolchildren.
The theme for the week, which runs from Saturday 16 to Saturday 23 August, is “Book an Adventure”, encouraging children to explore new worlds through stories.
Continue reading...It’s clear that if there is a crisis, it affects both men and women, boys and girls. So what can be done to boost reading?
The demise of men reading books has, once again, been greatly exaggerated.
A recent ABC article about Australians’ reading habits claimed “Australians, especially men, are reading less than ever before” and “the data showed females, on average, were reading more than males across all age groups”.
Continue reading...The freeze comes as the university pursues $100m in cost cuts and after it announced in April it could axe 400 jobs
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Academics at the University of Technology Sydney have described feelings of stress and a “culture of fear” after the educational institution temporarily paused student enrolments for nearly a fifth of its courses, leaving staff wondering if their jobs will be among the hundreds set to be axed.
The university has stopped taking in new students for 120 of its 615 courses, including masters degrees in teaching primary and secondary education. More than 50 of the affected courses were international study options attached to other degrees. The pause will last until the end of the autumn 2026 semester.
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Attorney general says Australia complying with international obligations regarding defence exports to Israel
Michelle Rowland says she is confident that Australia is meeting its obligations regarding defence approvals for exports of parts for F-35 fighter jets bound for Israel.
Certainly Israel is a democracy in the region. We maintain relations, obviously at that level. But as the prime minister himself has clearly said, these were difficult conversations that he needed to have with the government of Israel. We stand by the statements that we’ve made in terms of recognition – it has long been the policy of this government to have a two-state solution.
Continue reading...Results found four in 10 students performed below expectations in grammar and punctuation, indicating they struggled to recognise verbs and pronouns in sentences
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One in three students have failed to meet Naplan benchmarks, this year’s test results have showed, as thousands of disadvantaged students continue to fall through the cracks.
This year’s tests were taken in March by 1.3 million students across years 3, 5, 7 and 9 to measure literacy and numeracy proficiency, with results released on Wednesday by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (Acara).
Continue reading...Exclusive: Dr Eric Descheemaeker also alleges Australia’s top-ranked university will sack him unless ‘restrained from doing so’, court documents show
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A University of Melbourne law professor who claimed “‘Blak’ activists” were leading the prestigious institution to “destruction” alleges he has been suspended because of his political opinion.
Guardian Australia on Saturday revealed that Dr Eric Descheemaeker is suing Australia’s top-ranked university for discrimination. The legal action comes after a 2023 email written by Descheemaeker to the then head of the Melbourne Law School (MLS) was leaked and posted around the university’s Parkville campus last month.
Continue reading...Open letter urges Labor to reverse JRG scheme, introduced by Coalition in 2021, as cost of humanities degrees reaches more than $50,000
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Tim Winton knows what it’s like to be the first in a family to go to university – “what a breakthrough that is, the kind of opportunities it provides”.
It was at the Western Australian Institute of Technology, studying arts, that he wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer, launching a four-decade writing career.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Dr Eric Descheemaeker files court application against university after 2023 email to Melbourne law school dean leaked last month
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A University of Melbourne law professor who wrote an email saying the institution was dictated to by “‘Blak’ activists” who were leading it to “destruction” is suing Australia’s top-ranked university for discrimination.
Last month, a 2023 email written by Dr Eric Descheemaeker to the then head of the Melbourne Law School (MLS) was leaked and posted around the university’s Parkville campus. In the email, in response to the announcement of a cultural safety review at the university, Descheemaeker said MLS was “celebrating the ‘noble savage’” and likened it to an “ideological re-education camp”.
Continue reading...Duke Education says their course uses ‘chat-style delivery’ to deliver classes on writing emails and identifying hazards but does not utilise artificial intelligence
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A training organisation co-run by a vice-president of the Collingwood football club has been criticised for using chatbots to help teach a course to adult job seekers.
Duke Education, a registered training organisation (RTO), offers a certificate III in community services. A chatbot takes students through some of the coursework, such as how to write an email and recognise hazard signs.
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Continue reading...New Coalition education spokesperson Jonathon Duniam says Peter Dutton policy to slash international enrolments not ‘as constructive as it could have been’
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The Coalition has walked away from its call for Australia to slash 80,000 international students from higher education institutions, with the opposition’s education spokesperson promising a more “sensitive” approach after the party’s crushing election defeat in May.
During the federal election campaign, the then-opposition leader, Peter Dutton, claimed that cutting foreign student numbers would free up more housing and rental opportunities. Dutton said students were “taking up accommodation that should be occupied by Australian citizens”.
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The political leader of the central Tibetan administration – Tibet’s government in exile – is visiting Australia this week.
It comes as Anthony Albanese heads to China this weekend.
It is not enough to have freedom only in a few countries in this world. Freedom is necessary for every human being in this world.
When prime minister Albanese’s visiting there, I would urge him to also say that he would like to visit Tibet.
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Australia’s biggest peanut supplier set to shut down
The corporate owners of Australia’s biggest peanut processor will scale down the century-old business in the coming 18 months before shutting it down for good.
There isn’t detail, and it’s unclear whether those tariffs will ever actually be applied.
We do know that the contributions from the pharmaceutical industry in the US to that investigation has been to urge the US government to focus their levers on non-friendly countries and not apply tariffs or punitive levers to allies such as Australia.
Continue reading...Treasurer says Trump’s tariff threats on foreign pharmaceuticals and copper ‘very concerning developments’. Follow the latest news live
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Chalmers says millions of people were hoping for interest rate relief yesterday
Jim Chalmers says “there were millions of people who were hoping for more rate relief yesterday and didn’t get it”.
As per letters sent to various countries yesterday, in addition to letters that will be sent today, tomorrow, and for the next short period of time, TARIFFS WILL START BEING PAID ON AUGUST 1, 2025. There has been no change to this date, and there will be no change. In other words, all money will be due and payable starting AUGUST 1, 2025 - No extensions will be granted. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Continue reading...Victoria police say they attempted to engage with armed man before ‘siege of several hours’. Follow the latest updates live
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Smoke coming from Sydney tram causes to be suspended on Randwick line
Light rail services on the Randwick line have stopped due to smoke coming from the roof of a tram.
The man managed to get back into his car and drive a short distance before being overcome by his injuries.
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Power continues to be restored in NSW
About 5,800 customers remained without power at 7am Thursday, according to network operators Ausgrid, Endeavour Energy and Essential Energy.
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Khaled Sabsabi reinstated as Venice Biennale representative after independent review into dumping
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NSW wild weather: ‘Conditions can become dangerous quickly’
Wild weather has brought down trees, damaged properties and flooded roads on the NSW coast, NSW SES says.
These incidents are a timely reminder that roads are slippery, and conditions can become dangerous quickly.
Please, never drive, walk or play in flood waters. If you do come across a flooded road, turn around and find an alternative route.
Continue reading...NSW braces for damaging winds and heavy rain from coastal low. Follow the latest updates live
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Gas market review will ‘drive efficiencies in the system’, King says
The resources minister, Madeleine King, says a review into gas market regulations will drive efficiencies into the system.
Our existing policy has made sure that that gas is available. So that’s that combination of existing policies brings in that extra 600 petajoules. So indeed, that work is already happening.
What we’re trying to do and will endeavour to do, and the industry is very supportive of, is to make that more coherent, and how we can make sure we learn from the whole system, reduce duplication in some of the regulation, some of the reporting factors, simply how we can make it work better for consumers, for industrial users, and for the Gas industry itself. And that drives efficiencies in the system, which we expect will help with pricing.
We were honest with the public from day one: the toll situation would get worse before it got better. That’s the reality of the infrastructure pipeline locked in by our predecessors.
And now, the most recent NSW Budget reflects that – with toll revenue projected to rise from $180m to $283m in the 2028–29 financial year.
Continue reading...National Anti-Scam Centre warns that fraudsters posing as Mandarin-speaking law enforcement officers are becoming more threatening
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Scammers pretending to be Chinese authorities are increasingly targeting international students in Australia, threatening “serious trouble” and 24-hour surveillance and fleecing them of more than $5m in just five months.
The scammers claim to be Chinese law enforcement officers who demand that personal information or money be transferred to them.
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The foreign minister, Penny Wong, is expected to join a meeting of her Quad counterparts in Washington DC next week.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on Friday he would host foreign ministers from Australia, India and Japan on 1 July, with the meeting set to discuss geopolitical issues and China’s treatment of Indo-Pacific nations.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Report from Independent Schools Australia calls for data collection on student school refusal to better tackle rising absenteeism
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A new report has urged the federal government to collect national data on chronic absenteeism and embed layers of support in schools to tackle Australia’s growing student attendance crisis.
The report, provided exclusively to Guardian Australia by Independent Schools Australia (ISA), drew from interviews with academics, mental health clinicians and teachers. It called on the government to implement a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) to better support children struggling to stay in school.
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