In August last year the NSW government developed LifeLauncher, an online tool to help both students who know what they want to do and those who haven't yet made up their mind.

The tool quickly ascertains which type of student a person is and asks a series of questions to connect them to courses and careers. For the unsure, it asks questions to elicit their strengths and build a stronger understanding of what they might be able to do in the future. Education Review spoke to mother of twins Lesley Stewart about the how helpful the platform has been as her children move into the post-school years.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The education landscape in Australia is constantly shifting and this year was no different. NAPLAN went online, mobile phones were banned in all public Victorian schools and the way in which teachers assess and report on student achievement was under the microscope.

But the perennial issues remained and were reported on frequently. Why are our students' scores slipping internationally? What is the best way to teach reading? And are our teachers teaching the 'right' things for the jobs of the future?

These stories and more are covered in our year in review. I'm Wade Zaglas, the education editor for Education Review, and I look forward to bringing you more stories that matter to you next year.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a long career in the public service and and working as a education consultant, Fleur built the data analytics platform PeopleBench to help principals, in particular, "build an organisational strategy that could set the direction for a school for the next years. As Flue pointed out, an organisational strategy is vastly different from the usual teaching cycles and decision-making that is short-sighted and doesn't articulate the values underpinning a school's ethos and ambitions.

Data analytics systems helps principals make purposeful, informed decisions about where their school stands compared to similar and dissimilar schools and can inform national debate surrounding national trends. Fleur states that principals are expected to be "experts in everything these days", but often they lack the training in organisational strategy and using analytics to inform sound decision-making.

While many principals rely on their "lived experience" and support from HR to run a school, additional coaching and evidence-based data will be needed in the future, Fleur says, to lift school workforce achievement.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr Majeda Awawdeh is a former high school teacher who exited the education sector "after 15 years of frustration".

In this podcast, she talks about some of the causes of Australian students' slide in maths across the years and considers addressing the problem as national priority.

The academic, founder of Global Education Company and textbook writer, identified some key areas Australia must focus on if it is to improve its maths results. These include increasing the ATAR entry score for teaching, having adequately trained and well-remunerated teachers who are experts in their subject/s, and using quality resources such as textbooks to guide learning and avoid a "scattergun" teaching approach, which leaves students confused,

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, I’m Wade Zaglas, education editor at Education Review. This week was all about Australia’s underwhelming 2018 PISA results, so thought it would be best to produce a Response from the Sector, a five - to 10-minute run down of what Australia’s educations experts (not the media or the politicians) think about the results.

Dr Steven Lewis, a research fellow from Deakin University, said "We should remember that these numbers often indicate an equity problem.”

"While Australian students’ performance remain above the OECD average in reading and science, the fact that we are now equal to it in mathematics should be cause for concern, and there has been a steady decline across all domains since testing began in 2000."

The failure to address the needs of Indigenous Australian students was also brought up in academic discussions, with some arguing the Closing the Gap initiative has done little to address education disadvantage.

A more controversial view was esposed by Asssocuiate Profesor Jihyun Lee from the UNSW.

"The PISA 2018 report shows that Australia will need to seriously address the issue of classroom discipline," said Lee. "Simply put, if students don’t listen to what the teacher says, if there is noise and disorder in a learning space, and if a teacher has to wait for a long time for students to quiet down, how can we expect students to learn effectively in school?"

"Australia ranked 70th out of all 77 PISA 2018 participant countries/economies on this classroom disciplinary dimension. Forty-three percent of Australian students reported that there is noise and disorder in their language-of-instruction lessons in every or most lessons, which is the 5th highest percentage among all countries/economies."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A recent Indeed report concluded that searches for teaching jobs declined in 2019, with some states recording sharp drops. This follows an article in The Conversation last year lamenting the drop in first-preference applications in teaching, as well as a host of anecdotal accounts.

But is interest in teaching declining or is this just a lot of media hype?

Education Review spoke to Associate Professor Joanna Barbousas, Acting Head of School of Education at La Trobe University. Barbousas believes the decline is indeed real and can be attributed to many factors, including the changing requirements in becoming a teacher and negative reportage that is becoming more frequent.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Feelings. It's probably not a word that many of us would associate with mathematics. But according to Dr Carol Aldous from Flinders University, feelings and intuition play a critical role in solving novel maths problems - problems that require students to tap into the subconscious or "fringe conscious" parts of their brain.

Aldous came to the conclusion after observing 405 students solving novel maths problems at the Australian Mathematics Challenge and has recently published a book on the topic, entitled 'Unlocking Creativity in Solving Novel Mathematics Problems: Cognitive and non-cognitive perspectives and approaches'.

Aldous spoke to Education Review about her research and what she witnessed at the Australian Mathematics Challenge in the way students used phrases like "I feel" when solving truly novel maths problems.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Linguist, writing aficionado, consultant and founder of Lifelong Literacy Lyn Stone will be explaining – through her trademark eloquent language - just how difficult writing is, and the number of things teachers can do to improve their students’ writing, which has been consistently worse than reading in this country for some time.

Her piece is entitled The Pen is mightier than the sword. I urge all teachers, particularly kindy, preschool and primary teachers to listen to the messages in this piece.

In it she discusses the Simple View of Writing (SVW), which covers everything from pen control; spelling, punctuation and sentence constructions; and vocabulary and ideation. Stone is so passionate about this as these skills must be taught early in schools by well-trained teachers, with automatic the end goal.

Her fear is that, once all training has been exhausted, the "ship has sailed" as far as students' writing achievement, contributing to lifelong disadvantage. . She also tackles issue with the a well ingrained idea that spelling is based on some opaque and archaic system, which doesn't follow any predictable rules.

Stone brings writing back to the micro level, urging her students to "give her a few effective sentences" rather than a full page of incoherent, clumsy text, which is often asked of primary school students.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, Education editor Wade Zaglas here focussing on the top story of the week.

One story that struck me as particularly impressive was Australia being ranked fifth in the number of Highly Cited Researchers (HCRs) in the sciences and social sciences fields according to analytics company The Web of Science Group.

Indeed, one of the most notable finding was that Australia had tripled its number HCRs in six years: there were only 80 Australian HCRs named in 2014, compared with 217 in in 2019. While Australia has been actively recruiting HCRs from overseas since 2014, there has also been a steep increase in the number of homegrown HRCs.

Our population is modest (24,6 million), but that is not holding us bavck from being at the cutting-edge of research.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Last week's damning revelations about the treatment of some students with a disability in Australia involved tales of seclusion, segregation and even abuse. While the disability royal commission centered on a few horrific stories only, there are doubtless many more examples of such treatment occurring across the country every day.

Campus Review spoke to Andrew, which is not his real name, about his son's experience of primary school. Although being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder and having some behavioural issues, Andrew's son is a bright, loving child who is now thriving at high school.

However, Andrew's son's primary school years were a awful experience, reminiscent of some of the experiences heard at the royal commission. Andrew says his son was effectively babysat most of the time, denied access to the curriculum, and generally treated as burden to the school. More disturbingly, he was set upon by an older group of students, leaving him with black eyes, an incident the school failed to investigate or do anything about. Suspensions were also frequent as was being left in a room with an iPad for entertainment,

Andrew's son's experience, like others in similar situations, took a heavy toll on the family.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.