Brand-new resources to help staff and students prepare for this year’s Australian STEM Video Game Challenge are now available. Designed to support novice and experienced learners alike, the resources include curriculum-aligned lesson plans, links to free tutorials, tips for teachers, and more.

Welcome back to a brand-new year of Teacher. As usual, we’re kicking things off with our round up of the key themes and dates for 2025 – that should provide some extra inspiration and resources for your lesson planning over the next 12 months.

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.

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.

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.

Australia’s year 4 students have achieved the country’s best-ever result in a major international mathematics and science assessment, overcoming the challenges and disruption of pandemic learning in the early years of their schooling. The TIMSS 2023 results have just been released – here’s an overview of the international data and key findings for Australia.

Professor Phil Roberts joins Teacher Editor Jo Earp to talk about the Rural and Regional Education Project, which explores how to lift outcomes for students in these areas. The project included a roundtable event bringing together a range of stakeholders, including the important voices of principals and teachers. We’ll be discussing some of the research findings and feedback from educators.

A free new competition from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) recognises high student achievement in Literacy and Numeracy. Here, we celebrate the inaugural award winners and talk to educators about the value of challenging their high-achieving students.

Each year, the International Mathematical Modeling Challenge gives students an opportunity to team up on a complex task that connects their mathematical learning with a real-world situation. Teacher spoke to members of an Australian team judged among the best globally, about how they approached this year’s challenge.

Jacaranda’s resource development team has been working to deliver an effective way for schools to branch into GenAI, all while keeping inside the established bounds of the curriculum. This exciting project has produced JacTutor – a new tool set to provide students and teachers with a safe, interactive, and responsive tutor integrated directly into their classroom resource.