February 7, 2012

Coles Sports for Schools

Coles is running it’s Sports for Schools campaign again in 2012

Last year Coles gave away over 7 million to 7500 schools around Australia. Joining up is simple.

Register now to be a part of the 2012 Coles Sports for Schools Program .

Make sure your school is registered, click here

Plant for the Planet

Everyone loves to talk about the climate crisis. But talking alone isn’t going to stop the glaciers from melting. Or the rain-forests from disappearing. And each time adults just talk and don’t act, it’s up to us, the children, to take matters into our own hands. Quite literally. Plant-for-the-Planet is an organisation where kids all over the world plant trees as a sign of climate justice.


Register your school today.
Help us save our planet

NAB Schools First 2012

NAB Schools First is brought to life by NAB in partnership with the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) and Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER).

What is NAB Schools First?At its heart, NAB Schools First brings together students, teachers, parents and community members to help young people grow. Launched in October 2008 by the Hon. Julia Gillard, MP, NAB Schools First is a national awards program pledging $15 million over three years.

The program provides:

# financial recognition of success in establishing effective
# school-community partnerships; and
# financial support to build stronger school-community partnerships.

In its first two years, 195 school-community partnerships have benefited from NAB Schools First with over $10 million in funding provided to enhance and develop these school-community partnerships.

Any school in Australia can apply for a NAB Schools First Award. To date, over 20% of Australian schools have applied for a NAB Schools First Award.

Read More about it here

WHS – A Community Concern

What do WHS Laws mean for your community group or P&C.

The changes for some are significant and cannot be ignored, the fines and legal ramifications in some cases are severe. But there are ways to comply and minimise your risk.

In 2008, Workplace Relations Ministers across Australia agreed to nationally harmonise work health and safety (WHS) laws.

All States and Territory except Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia will commence their work health and safety laws, on 1 January 2012.

Qld Parliament became the first to pass the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (the WHS Act 2011). The WHS Act 2011 reflects the national moderl WHS Act with minor changes which enable it to operate within the Queensland jurisdiction.

Click on the following to download a summary of the new changes that will affect all businesses from 1st January 2012.

Work Health and Safety Bill – What does it all Mean!

Click on the following to download a checklist to assist your businesses with the changes. Also information on funding, grants and support.

Queensland’s new WHS Laws – Checklist to assist you!

In some cases the costs to become compliant will be significant. On January 20th, Bill Shorten , Federal Minsiter with responsibility for Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Financial Services and Superannuation held a roundatable meeting in Melbourne with Stakeholders.

Read here what was discussed and the outcomes.

In the meantime contact your organisation advisors, WHS in your State or read these links

 

Our friends at ACSEA have provided us with some of the above content

Are Australian children being taught the right foreign languages?

It would seem not according to parents and business.

The Australian this week posted a story with comments from the head of the accounting body, CPA Australia, saying that only “Only 300 students who do not have a Chinese background are studying Chinese in Year 12 and only 18 per cent of all school students study an Asian language”.

The story raises issues that are not new in Australia. Do we continue to teach langauges that are not of our major trading partners or do we embrace these Asian langauges?

In Queensland at least the answer is, “we can’t attract enough teachers of these langauges” according to Education Queensland and “therefore we’ll have to teach German because we have plenty of those teachers.”

Lets come up with a solution. Australia’s economic focus is no longer Europe, the current economic climate means it wont be for years to come. Asia is feeding us and to empower our children with the skills to work in this part of the world we need to skill them accordingly.

Lets get business, parents and our Asian community leaders together and lets build the capacity within to teach these needed skills.

Schools funding fails

According to Report exposed by The Australian today, Australia’s state schools continue to cater for the more underpriviledged than their Private school partners.

The report which can be found here says that the funding mix for Australian schools is being skewed by the Federal Governments current funding arrangements.

The report makes interesting reading. It will be hopeful that the Gonski report which is in the hands of the Federal Government will have taken this into account and that schools who need greater levels of funding to support their communities can somehow be provided with the resources they need to become more positive focuses for their communities.

Listen here to an interview from ABC Radio