Welcome back to a new school year. Over the past few weeks, the Teacher team have been busy putting together content to help support you for the year ahead, and in today’s episode we’re going to take you through some of the highlights. We’ll be discussing school leadership, gifted education, setting up your classroom, and resources for planning.

The winners of the annual Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science Teaching in primary and secondary schools have been announced. Darren Hamley from Willetton Senior High School in Western Australia and Sarah Fletcher from Bonython Primary School in the ACT were awarded with the prizes, and they both join us in today’s episode.

Leaders and teachers moved swiftly to ensure continuity of children’s learning during the COVID pandemic, and parents and carers in Australia certainly appreciated their efforts, with a new survey showing high levels of satisfaction with how schools adapted.

Large scale research into school break times suggests relatively simple changes to daily routines could drastically reduce teachers’ exposure to UV radiation and risk of skin cancer. Ben Dexter tells Teacher more about the findings.

It’s no surprise that a teacher’s self-efficacy has a huge impact on their classroom teaching. But what aspects of work as a beginner teacher has an influence on how perceived self-efficacy develops? A research report has looked into this and we discuss the findings in this podcast episode.

We’ve collected the details of significant themes and events which might help inspire some of your upcoming lessons for 2021. Here, find out about STEM and literacy events that are scheduled, as well as themes of global significance which you might find relevant.

Andreas Schleicher – Director for Education and Skills at the OECD and long-time Teacher columnist – joins us from Paris for this episode to give his take on all things 2020, talk about the longer term impacts of the school shutdowns and share how different education systems have responded to the pandemic restrictions.

The annual Global Teacher Prize has been awarded for 2020. Ranjitsinh Disale, a primary school teacher in India who has transformed education for girls in his community, has been named winner of the US $1 million award. Here, we look at how he’s improving learning at his school.

Australian students have performed significantly better in the latest cycle of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in Year 8 mathematics and Year 4 and Year 8 science – but not in Year 4 mathematics – than they did in 2015. Here, we take a closer look at the results.

One-to-one and small-group tutoring have emerged as a catch-up strategy for schools to address student learning gaps as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with government funded programs announced here in Australia and overseas. Dr Pauline Ho and Dr Tanya Vaughan look at the evidence and give five key takeaways for school leaders and teachers.