A series of government policy reforms over recent decades aimed to increase the proportion of Australian workers with university degrees. They got that result, but what they did not expect to see was that almost one in four unemployed people would have a degree (although employees with a degree appear to have fared better during […] … learn more→

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation announced the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic of worldwide consequence. Globally, the economic, health and social disruption caused by the pandemic has been, and continues to be, devastating. Higher education and academia have not been spared from the impact of COVID-19. In Australia alone, it is anticipated that […] … learn more→

France, last of the class in maths? Published in December 2020, the latest results of the TIMSS survey are cause for concern for parents and teachers. Indeed, in mathematics, France is in last place at European level and among the very last at OECD level. How to explain such a poor performance? TIMSS is an international program to assess the performance of […] … learn more→

Finished the thesis? Loud cheers. Now to get ready for the viva, or defence as it is called in some places. There’s a lot of great advice about how to prepare for the viva – check out Nathan Ryder’s Viva Survivors blog podcast and workshops, VITAE’s resource pages and Eva Lantsoght’s PhD talk series on PhD vivas around the […] … learn more→

India’s education minister, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, told parliament in January how more than 6,000 faculty positions remain unfilled at the country’s 50 or so central universities. At one of the country’s largest institutions, Savitribai Phule Pune University, at least 200 faculty roles are vacant, while empty academic positions can be found everywhere from cash-strapped colleges […] … learn more→

Much ink has been spilt of late on the evils of essay mills. Several countries have already outlawed them, and former universities minister Chris Skidmore recently introduced a bill in the UK Parliament to do the same. Essays mills are undeniably a blight on university assessments, but with teaching and assessment still largely taking place […] … learn more→

  After years of relying on a single controversial test at age 4 for admission to their gifted programs, New York City schools are about to embark upon a new way to identify gifted students. The city’s Department of Education announced in February that it would stop testing students for its gifted program, which places top students […] … learn more→

Back when I was in college, the internet was in its inception; information was hard to find online and even less reliable than it is today. If I wanted to know basic facts (“What is the fundamental attribution error?”; “What are the stages of meiosis?”; “What was the Treaty of Westphalia?”), I had to either ask an expert or […] … learn more→

Homeschooling registrations for children in Victoria in 2020 were almost four times the number of the previous year, recent reports show. Some families who had children learning from home during lockdown discovered they enjoyed spending more time together and some children found they learnt better at home. Parents may have recognised academic or social challenges for their […] … learn more→

We know COVID-19 and its associated changes to our work and learning habits caused a marked increase in the use of technology. More surprising, perhaps, is the impact these lockdowns have had on children’s and young people’s self-reported enjoyment of books and the overall positive impact this has made on reading rates. A recent survey from the […] … learn more→