Jo Earp

This episode of our School Assembly podcast is all about policies and processes. Which documents are the responsibility of the Foundation Principal? Is there a template that schools work from? Our Series 3 Notre Dame P-12 Principal Dan McShea joins us from Queensland to share some of the planning that goes on behind the scenes at a new school.

A national survey from Australian children’s charity The Smith Family has asked families about their hopes for their child’s school education. The top theme from responses was ‘good or improved academic achievement’, while 6% gave answers related to ‘affording resources and having access to opportunities’. Find out more in this infographic.

‘Do you want to be a teacher?’ Is this a question you’ve asked your own students? A new Australian study aimed at boosting the number of First Nations teachers has found that Aboriginal students would like someone to speak to them about teaching as a possible career.

What are the essential skills we need for learning and life, and how can teachers help students to develop them? The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) has been working with more than 30 countries to identify 5 essential skills and design a suite of free educator resources. Dr Claire Scoular shares more details in this expert Q&A.

For the last 6 months, Series 3 of our School Assembly podcast has been following Dan McShea, Foundation Principal of Notre Dame P-12 College on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The big day finally arrived, and in this episode Teacher Editor Jo Earp checks in with Dan on how that first day of the new school went.

One of the topics in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) student questionnaire is the quality of student-teacher relationships. This infographic looks at the responses of Australian students in the 2022 test cycle, by state and territory.

Over the last 5 years, staff at St Mary’s School in Geelong, Victoria, have had a focus on lifting student outcomes through evidence-based instruction. What started with Foundation phonics has now spread across the curriculum and year levels.

It’s a special, bumper episode of School Assembly as Teacher Editor Jo Earp chats to Dan McShea about setting the teaching direction, and also checks in on Ray Boyd and Rachael Lehr, who we followed in Series 1, and Series 2 principal Jo Camozatto to find out what’s been happening at their schools.

In this annual wrap-up of our year in podcasts, the editorial team at Teacher select their favourite episodes of 2024 – from our School Improvement series to the Research Files and more – and discuss why the episodes resonated with the team and Teacher listeners.

In our latest expert Q&A we’re joined by ACER Senior Research Fellow and lead author of the ‘TIMSS 2023 Australia Volume I’ report Nicole Wernert to discuss the main takeaways, and what the data say about year 4 and 8 student strengths and weaknesses in maths and science.