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High school

December 2024

The King’s School has taken the mantle of Australia’s most expensive school.

Private school fees to rise at almost triple the rate of inflation

Prestigious schools have been gradually contacting parents over the past few weeks announcing new fee schedules for 2025. 

  • Julie Hare

November 2024

Almost half of all year 12 exams in Victoria were affected by a blunder that allowed students to view questions before sitting the test, leading the head of the exam authority to quit.

VCE boss quits after exam paper debacle

Victorian Education Minister Ben Carroll said Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority boss Kylie White resigned over the weekend.

  • Gus McCubbing

August 2024

A 50pc improvement: Unis turn the tide on disadvantage

The winner of the community engagement category is reversing the fortunes of disadvantaged children in a partnership that has lifted HSC results.

  • Agnes King
Girls outperform boys in every NAPLAN domain except numeracy.

Boys’ results plummet early in high school

After 10 years of compulsory schooling, about two in five boys are struggling to read and write at a high level. This is a big problem for the nation.

  • Updated
  • Julie Hare

July 2024

Some students say they want to protect their mental health by avoiding the stress of exams.

Stressed teens would rather finish school with no ATAR than sit exams

Students at co-educational schools reported the highest scores on emotional and mental wellbeing, and girls-only school students the lowest.

  • Julie Hare
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June 2024

PhD student Dan McDougall decided public relations was not for him.

Higher education key to bigger pay, Labor MP argues

When it comes to the relationship between education and earning capacity, research suggests more is better.

  • Julie Hare

March 2024

Jasmine Werneburg says doing the international baccalaureate was more academically rigorous than her university degree.

Poor kids who choose the IB do better than rich kids who don’t: study

Jasmine Werneberg says the International Baccalaureate she did at high school was more academically rigorous than her business-law degree at university.

  • Julie Hare
Cindy Nguyen, 19, says high quality careers advice turned her on to mechanical engineering as her future career.

Study shows why kids drop out of school

Schools need to respond to early warning signs and provide individualised support if high school dropout rates are to be averted, a study says.

  • Julie Hare

Our most and least educated politicians, in six charts

We analysed the educational backgrounds of all 226 federal politicians in Australia – and found they aren’t particularly representative of the broader population.

  • Julie Hare and Cindy Yin
Too many children are treading water in schools that struggle to improve academic performance.

How ‘families’ of schools could spread educational success

Instead of hoping “superhero” principals can lift schools that fall short, a network bound together through a united executive team can increase the odds of improvement.

  • Jordana Hunter
Well-heeled schools have much better access to resources, but ChatGPT could help level the playing field for poorer schools if used properly, experts say.

Private school parents save the education system $4.6b a year: study

A new analysis calculates that governments spend $4.6 billion less each year than they would if all students were enrolled in public schools.

  • Updated
  • Julie Hare
Jason Clare and Mary O’Kane launching the universities accord.

Have we just laid out a plan to kill the traditional university?

The universities accord says that the number of university students needs to double by 2050. That raises the question of what we actually want from our universities.

  • Julie Hare

February 2024

Sarah Lowe, principal at St Matthew’s Primary in Canberra, with year 4 student Camilla Larobina. .

Science supports rote learning in schools: report

A push to return classrooms to explicit instruction, phonics and rote learning is based on the science of learning.

  • Julie Hare
Australia needs a massive systemwide approach to boosting reading ability for all students.

One in three Aussie kids can’t read this headline: Grattan

Schools need to transform the way they teach reading so that fewer children get left behind, think tank report says.

  • Julie Hare
Australia is among the worst in the world when it comes to classroom discipline.

Disruptive kids are on the rise in Australia’s classrooms

But a Senate report into disruptive classroom behaviour has only one recommendation - to create another inquiry into the matter.

  • Julie Hare
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January 2024

Fees make up only half of the cost of education costs in independent schools.

School fees paid? Then double your budget

Rising school fees are heaping stress on household budgets. And then there’s the extra cost of uniforms, sports gear, music lessons and camps.

  • Julie Hare
The rapid rise of AI could transform the skills needed for workers as it makes some tasks and roles obsolete.

Nobel Prize winner cautions on rush into STEM

The economist says the rise of artificial intelligence may boost the need for more graduates with empathy and creativity, rather than science and maths skills.

  • Tom Rees
Young Australians seem to be shunning university education, even as Education Minister Jason Clare aims to lift the proportion with degrees.

School leavers shun uni, enrolments hit near-decade low

Gap years were back in 2022, but the 8.2 per cent drop in first-year university students also confirms a worrying trend that young people are shunning degrees.

  • Julie Hare

December 2023

In NSW, the latest science syllabus matches some of the higher-performing countries.

Australia’s science curriculum is not broken

The performance of science students has stopped declining as resources from private publishers became available to teachers. Investing more in what is working will be far more productive than starting from scratch.

  • Alan Finkel
Adam Vine-Hall is an old boy of Sydney’s Newington College and is supportive of its plan to admit girls.

I went to Newington and want my son to learn with girls. Here’s why

Witnesses say opponents of Newington College’s plan to admit girls blew raspberries at supporters during a heated meeting of parents at the school this week.

  • Updated
  • Samantha Hutchinson

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/topic/high-school-5y8