Intervention

Earlier this year, our podcast with Mandy Nayton – Educational and Developmental Psychologist and CEO of the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation – explored ways to support students of all ages read successfully. In the first of 3 follow-up articles, ACU Professor Genevieve McArthur – Director of Research Translation at the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation – shares how reading difficulties can impact student wellbeing.

In this episode of The Research Files, Teacher editor Jo Earp is joined by Mason Zhou and Professor Dot Dumuid to talk about a South Australian study into the impact of secondary school transition on student wellbeing. One of the key findings is it’s not a short-term dip – students may be struggling in their second year, too.

Absent students miss more than just lesson content; they miss the opportunities to build the habits and skills to succeed at school and in life. New OECD research shows ‘school attendance problems are no longer a marginal issue; they have become a challenge affecting classrooms in nearly every country’.

The winner of the inaugural Global Schools Prize – an international US $500,000 prize presented to a school to scale their impact – has been announced as The Alsama Project from Lebanon. Find out more about the winner, and an Australian school that also made it all the way to the top 50, in today’s article.

In this exclusive extract from his new book The Children We Leave Behind: How School Could Be Done Differently, former Australian Council for Educational Research CEO and Teacher columnist, Professor Geoff Masters AO shares details of the Fremantle Fast Track Program – an alternative, senior secondary education program in Western Australia.

In today’s podcast, CEO of the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation and Educational and Developmental Psychologist, Mandy Nayton, joins Teacher’s Dominique Beech to share frameworks to support all students to read successfully. We cover essential phonics knowledge, morphology, vocabulary and word study, and also discuss how to support older students’ literacy skills. 

In today’s Leadership Q&A, River Nile School Principal Charles Hertzog shares what makes his school community unique, how the context shapes his leadership priorities, and how he brings teachers, wellbeing staff, and external agencies into a shared vision.

‘Instead of focusing on absence, we focus on presence now. We celebrate students turning up.’ In today’s episode, Dominique Russell is joined by Chantel Barnes, Principal at Glenora District School in rural Tasmania, to hear all about how they’ve flipped the script on attendance in the last 12 months by focusing on the language they use and sharing data with all members of the school community. 

Transitioning to formal schooling, and from primary to secondary school, is a big change for students. New research shines a light on the impact of student absenteeism during these transition years, and recommends primary and secondary schools work together to support attendance. We’re joined by the study’s lead author to find out more.

Research shows that when children thrive in their early years, they have a strong foundation for lifelong learning, health, development and wellbeing. New data from the 2024 Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) show there has been an overall increase in the percentage of children developmentally on track on 5 AEDC domains since the baseline was established in 2009.