If I were minister for school education…
There will be no quick or easy way to redesign the existing school system.
Recent articles in Education
17 April 2025
Australia’s innovation system needs new partners
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
15 April 2025
Managing overseas student policy is key to keeping migration numbers in check. If I was immigration minister, Part 2
Ever since Scott Morrison told overseas students to go home at the start of the pandemic and then stomped on the student visa accelerator once the pandemic ended, overseas student numbers have increased and policy has been fraught with constant changes to reduce the inflow of students.
14 April 2025
Why cap the number of university students from abroad?
Having been unable to pass legislation, the Albanese Labor Government (as it likes to be called) decided in 2024 to use the “slow student visa process” to reduce international student numbers because of the problems they cause in taking houses and jobs from Australians.
10 April 2025
How Australian education was captured by arms dealers
Australian universities, technical institutes and schools are becoming militarised. The power of defence industry money combined with government policy and public underfunding of education have created an avalanche of defence funding and profound influence over our education system and the people who emerge from it.
6 April 2025
Over the rainbow
The Albanese Government is entitled to proclaim that the agreements they have now reached with every state and territory will put all public schools on a path to full and fair funding.
3 April 2025
Peter Slezak's speech to the University of Technology Sydney rally on 26 March
Remarks made by UNSW academic Peter Slezak at a rally at UTS on 26 March, have attracted considerable negative coverage in the Murdoch media. [The Australian and The Daily Telegraph] Pearls And Irritations is carrying the full text of the speech so that readers can make up their own minds.
28 March 2025
Ivy League convulsions – will we be next?
The shock waves continue from Columbia University’s capitulation to Trump administration demands that undermine its independence. The world is watching and waves are already crashing on Australia's shores.
23 March 2025
Universal early learning and the three-day guarantee
The passing of the Early Childhood Education and Care (Three-Day Guarantee) Bill 2025 marks a major shift in Australia’s early childhood education and care system. For the first time, tens of thousands of children who were previously excluded from early learning will have access to at least three days of subsidised care each week (72 hours per fortnight), regardless of their parents’ work or study status.
20 March 2025
Trump is surveying Australian academics about gender diversity and China – what does this mean for unis and their research?
Shortly after taking office, US President Donald Trump issued executive orders banning federal funding on so-called “woke” research.
15 March 2025
Going, going… to the highest bidder: Australia’s school system
Recent headlines confirm that it is now difficult to deal with the market forces that successive governments in this country have unleashed in our school system and which are now driving it in perilous directions.
14 March 2025
Government funding increases entrench private school resource advantage
Government funding increases for Catholic and Independent schools have outstripped those for public schools since 2009 and entrenched a major resource advantage for them. New figures published by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority show Catholic and Independent schools have a much higher income per student than public schools across Australia and in nearly every state/territory.
14 March 2025
Why is Israel such a big deal?
I'll begin with a reminder, for the Zionists in the audience, of what antisemitism is. I grew up surrounded by adults with blue numbers tattooed on their forearms. My primary school teacher relentlessly picked on the three Jewish kids in her class. My high school refused to discipline a girl who punched me in the nose because I was Jewish. When I was in my 20s, a man beside me on the bus lamented audibly to his friend that it was a pity Hitler didn't burn us all. I know what antisemitism is. And I know what it is not.
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Be alert and alarmed: Campus silencing on Palestine
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Anti-Palestinian discrimination in NSW public schools
