Reforms

South Australia reforms Education Act, giving new protections to preschool staff

Noticias

Oceania/ Australia/ 28.08.2019/ Source: thesector.com.au.

The South Australian Department for Education has announced that the Education and Children’s Services Act 2019 will replace the Education Act 1972 and the Children’s Services Act 1985. 

The new Act will come into operation during 2020, and includes a number of changes relevant to the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector.

New protections for school and preschool staff and tougher penalties for those who abuse teachers and principals

The first change for the new Act is tougher penalties against those who use abusive, threatening or insulting language or behave in an offensive or threatening manner to a Department for Education staff member acting in the course of their duties, with maximum fines increased to $2,500.

The rules which allow Department for Education sites to bar individuals for bad behaviour have been extended so that government preschools, and non-government schools, preschools and all children’s services can do the same, with the maximum fine for breaching a barring order lifted from $200 to $2,500.

New information sharing guidelines 

The revised Act gives site leaders the right to request reports from a child’s previous school or preschool on academic progress and other relevant information so they can support the safety and wellbeing of the student and others.

The Department, government agencies, schools, preschools and children’s services are now explicitly permitted to share information on the education, health, safety, welfare and wellbeing of a child to support their education journey.

The Department can now require parents/ carers to provide information, including medical and other details about a child, to help a school or preschool cater to their needs.

Addressing bullying and serious assaults

One of the Acts powers is that the Chief Executive of the Department for Education now has ‘circuit-breaking’ power to direct that a child be enrolled at a different preschool or school for the health, safety and welfare of them or other students and staff in response to serial bullying or a serious assault.

Governing councils fund to dispute Department for Education 

An independent fund for governing councils to use to pay for the costs of legal advice in relation to disputes with the Department has been introduced as part of the reforms.

The rules in relation to Governing councils have also been “tightened” so that the presiding member of a governing council will need to be a parent/ carer of a student unless no parent/ carer is willing to do the job.

 

Clearer rules for religious and cultural activities

Principals and preschool site leaders are now required to give notice to parents/ carers of a religious or cultural activity so they can make informed decisions about their child’s involvement.

Children who don’t participate must now be offered an appropriate alternative activity and not suffer any detriment for not participating.

Modernised employment provisions

The Department will now be able to directly employ a broader range of staff in preschools and schools, including nurses, social workers, youth workers, psychologists and other professionals that an education community may need.

The Department will be able to offer special remuneration to attract and retain highly skilled school and preschool leaders and teachers.

Source of the notice:https://thesector.com.au/2019/08/26/south-australia-reforms-education-act-giving-new-protections-to-preschool-staff/

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United States: Study findings aim to improve teacher preparedness strategies

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United States / March 24, 2018/By: Miranda García/Dailycampus

Resumen: Los hallazgos de un estudio de los Institutos Americanos de Investigación están orientados a mejorar las estrategias de preparación de los docentes y podrían aplicarse a programas de preenseñanza de pregrado y posgrado en todo el país para preparar mejor a las personas que desean convertirse en docentes, Jenny DeMonte y Jane Coggshall de AIR dijo.

 The findings of an American Institutes for Research (AIR) study are geared toward improving strategies for teacher preparedness and could be applied to undergraduate and graduate pre-teaching programs across the country to better prepare people who want to become teachers, Jenny DeMonte and Jane Coggshall of AIR said.

DeMonte and Coggshall said these findings include a push for specific and practice-driven research, which involves targeting a particular issue regarding teacher preparedness and then testing out new strategies in a real classroom. The study also calls for the use of observational feedback from students and researchers in classrooms and a strong emphasis on measurement and data collection to allow for repetition of successful practices.

“The report validates what the Neag faculty already have been doing.

— Dr. Suzanne Wilson

The findings of this large-scale study are consistent with other teacher preparedness studies across the country, Dr. Suzanne Wilson, Neag Endowed Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Connecticut and Chair of Curriculum and Instruction in the Neag School, said in an email.

“Teacher preparedness has been the focus of a great deal of (at times) impassioned debate in the last thirty years,” Wilson said. “The teacher workforce is the largest profession in the U.S.; preparing close to four million teachers to be high quality is challenging.”

The study involved participants from schools across the country, including Northern Arizona University, Indiana University and Drexel University, to bring together strategies on the usually divided topic of teacher preparedness approaches, DeMonte and Coggshall said.

“As one of our country’s most important social institutions, schools – and teachers – are a site for debate about U.S. values and priorities, and as a divided public, it is not surprising that we would be divided on the question of how teachers are prepared,” Wilson said. “The conference on which the report is based made a conscientious effort to collect both practitioners and researchers who have interests in teacher education in one place, and to provide structures to support collective work toward common ends, rather than debate.”

The study began in April 2017 when a panel of more than three dozen teacher-educators, school district leaders and researchers came together to plan an investigation into how to better prepare teachers, DeMonte and Coggshall said.

A new research design was utilized in the study in which the participants convened first to plan their investigation, tested their new strategies out in the classroom and then reconvened to discuss their findings, DeMonte and Coggshall said.

Wilson said Neag has already used some of these findings, from studies similar to this one in the past.

“The Neag teacher preparation program has embraced several of the cornerstones of these reforms, including strong partnerships with local schools in which prospective teachers have extensive clinical practice, a focus on high leverage practices and using data in ways that enable nimble and rapid changes when programmatic weaknesses are identified,” Wilson said. “So the report validates what the Neag faculty already have been doing.”

 Fuente: http://dailycampus.com/stories/2018/3/21/study-findings-aim-to-improve-teacher-preparedness-strategies
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Kenia: Public universities staff set for contract employment

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Kenia / 22 de noviembre de 2017 / Por: OUMA WANZALA / Fuente: http://www.nation.co.ke/

Tough times await public universities as the government moves to reform the sector it says has been riddled with financial mismanagement and poor governance.

The second phase of the reforms of the sector, which started in February, will see thousands of teaching and non-teaching staff put on contract, a number of them retrenched, a freeze in setting up satellite campuses, and development of a single payroll system, among other changes.

The radical reforms were unveiled on Wednesday by Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i at a meeting attended by vice-chancellors and council chairpersons of the 31 public universities at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies in Nairobi.

STRIKE

However, the universities management questioned the motive of the reforms, saying some of them cannot be hurriedly rolled out without appropriate consultation.

Kisii University VC John Akama said the proposals need to be interrogated further, noting that the government should not be preoccupied with financial mismanagement yet the universities are struggling to remain afloat.

Prof Akama said a critical issue such as the lecturers’ strike that started on November 1 had been ignored by the ministry yet it is important as learning is not going on at the institutions.

“No one is talking about the lecturers’ strike. We cannot talk about quality education when we have no resources. The issue of funding of public universities should be properly interrogated,” said Prof Akama.

The chairman of the Vice-Chancellors Committee, Prof Francis Aduol, said there is need to revisit some of the policies that are being developed by the government regarding universities.

“We should not rush these reforms. As vice-chancellors, we will look at the proposals and make our recommendations,” said Prof Aduol, who is also the VC of the Technical University of Kenya.

SATELLITE CAMPUSES

The government has frozen the establishment of satellite campuses across the country, a move it believes will allow universities to expand existing campuses.

The establishment of satellite campuses was aimed at tapping into Kenya’s growing population that is thirsty for education.

The government is proposing the employment of staff at two levels — contract as well as permanent and pensionable. The proposal is set to be effected next year.

The move is aimed at weeding out staff who do not work yet earn salaries and are assured of pension.

The decision will prompt the institutions to allocate funds for retrenchment.

“We must get rid of staff who only teach one lesson and use the rest of the time to do their own business.

TERMS

“We cannot have a cleaner on permanent terms. We must get out of this obsession with permanent and pensionable terms,” said Dr Matiang’i.

Putting staff on a single payroll will also affect the institutions since those with parallel programmes need lecturers to teach the students.

“Lecturers are supposed to teach for eight hours. After that, it is extra work. If we do not want to pay them, then we must collapse self-sponsored programmes into regular,” said a senior lecturer.

The decision to demand self- sponsored students’ funds from universities could complicate the matter as the cash is normally used to finance development projects.

“You cannot collect money, give it to the government and expect it to wire back the same cash for development.
“The government should keep off and allow these institutions, which are independent, to run their affairs,” said Universities Academic Staff Union secretary-general Constantine Wasonga.

Fuente noticia: http://www.nation.co.ke/news/Universities-staff-contract-employment/1056-4193974-137jdbx/index.html

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Montenegro Education Council Members Resign, Learn Lesson About Plagiarism

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Montenegro/ August 30, 2017/ By: Alan Crosby/ Source: https://www.rferl.org

Montenegro’s National Education Council was set up to prepare a new curriculum for the country’s students. Apparently plagiarism wasn’t one of the lessons in the package of reforms.

The council recently published its long-awaited reforms ahead of the return of students to classes for the upcoming school year.

Within days, several experts from a 500-member panel in neighboring Croatia that had earlier drawn up a curriculum package to update that country’s education system recognized many of the changes.

In fact, they said, large parts of their work were plagiarized, some passages word for word, without attribution.

Three members of the council resigned on August 27 and said they would give back their salaries over the matter.

«If any child in the world benefits from our work, that’s good. What bothers me is the way it was done, without asking us as the authors, and without asking Croatia, which owns the documents that were taken,» said Boris Jokic, the head of the Croatian working group that drew up the reforms, in an interview on N1 television in Croatia on August 29.

Officials in Montenegro have acknowledged the similarities between the two reform packages but said the framework was not its final version and that it borrows from the experiences and practices of several countries.

The Education and Science Ministry, which oversees the council, said on August 22 that it would investigate the claims. Croatia, meanwhile, has said it is consulting with legal experts.

«The authenticity of educational efforts does not exclude the observation of the best experiences of others in order to realize the full potential of all children,» Montenegro’s Bureau for Education Services said in an August 22 statement.

Ironically, the Croatian plan, drawn up between 2015 and 2016, was pushed to the side amid internal bickering in the cabinet that took power after a snap election in 2016.

Each country is undertaking reforms to overhaul its education system’s curriculum and training methods, giving teachers more freedom in classrooms that would become more interactive.

Source:

https://www.rferl.org/a/montenegro-education-reforms-plagiarism-lesson/28703476.html

 

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