This week’s top story: Experts have warned that Thursday’s shocking events at Bonnyrigg High School serve as a reminder that principals should be familiar with their critical response policies. On Thursday, a 16-year-old student was arrested by police after two high school students and a teacher were stabbed at the school, located in Sydney’s west. Nathan Croot, senior associate at Emil Ford Lawyers, told The Educator that there are a couple of reminders for principals from Thursday’s incident. Click here to read more.
In other news, NSW Education Minister, Adrian Piccoli, often hailed as the nation’s best education minister, lost his job this week after a cabinet reshuffle by new Premier, Gladys Berejiklian. During his six years as the state’s education minister, Piccoli implemented Gonski funding reforms, gave principals greater decision-making authority, rolled out reforms to improve teacher quality and bridged the divide between rural and Sydney schools.
Finally, new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed that the proportion of Australian children enrolled in government schools increased slightly in 2016. An ABS spokesperson, Michelle Marquardt, said that public schools now educated 65.4% of all Australian school students (2,483,802), rising slightly from 65.2% in 2015 and 65.1% in 2014. In a statement on Thursday, Marquardt said the figures represented “a reversal of the steady drift” of students from public to private schools observed for much of the past 40 years.