Melbourne Museum opens $5.8 million Pauline Gandel Children’s Gallery

MELBOURNE Museum’s new children’s gallery opens for business today and its developers and testers were as young as just a few months old.
         
               

The new $5.8 million Pauline Gandel Children’s Gallery is designed for children from birth to age five and more than 500 tiny tots helped developers fine tune the final inclusions.

Melbourne Museum education and community programs manager Georgie Meyer said children from local childcare centres, kinders and other groups took part in workshops, design, development and testing of the new 2000sq.m space.

“This new space is very much dedicated to the learning needs and play space for the very young child, from babies to five-year-olds,” Ms Meyer said.

“The original children’s gallery was built when the Museum was built in 2000 so it was 16 years old and time for a refresh.

“That space was aimed at three to eight year olds but so much more is now understood about how learning occurs from birth and how a child’s brain develops from birth and the importance of coming to cultural institutions and making them welcoming for babies and toddlers.”

The new outdoor area includes a dinosaur skeleton stretching across two fully-accessible sandpits, seating and picnic areas, a rock garden featuring geologically important rock types from across Victoria, a crystal cave, growing cubby houses fashioned from apple trees, and other hiding spaces.

Philanthropists Pauline and John Gandel donated $1 million toward the project, with Mrs Gandel describing the new space as “a true game changer in the field of early childhood development and education.”

“Children are our future and we must do everything we can to give them the best possible start in life,” Mrs Gandel said. “Enabling them to have fun while they learn is at the core of the new Children’s Gallery and they are in for a real treat.”

Nursery teacher shortage 'risks children's learning'

A chronic shortage of fully qualified teachers in England's private and voluntary nurseries is risking young children's education, warns a charity.
Last year more than a quarter of a million under-fives attended non-state nurseries without a qualified teacher, says a report by Save the Children.
Applications for early years teacher training have plummeted, leaving nurseries struggling, say the authors.
                 

The government said staff quality was already good and continued to improve.
Contact with highly qualified staff is crucial to young children's development, says the report.

The researchers focused on privately run, voluntary and other independent childcare settings as opposed to state-run nurseries, which tend to be attached to primary schools and are more likely to employ qualified teachers.
They looked at three- and four-year-olds, 95% of whom attend some form of childcare each week.

The report, based on new analysis of official figures, also found that in the academic year to July 2016, half of all three- and four-year-olds or more than 280,000 children, had attended a private, voluntary or independent setting without a teacher who held a degree-level early years qualification working directly with them.

Overall, just half of independent nurseries in England employed a qualified teacher last year, says the report.
But this masked wide variations between local authorities: 86% of young children in Sunderland were in childcare settings with qualified teachers, but only 16% in the London borough of Newham.

And the report quotes National College of Teaching and Leadership figures showing a fall in early years teacher trainee numbers.

Family day care rorts cost our children’s educational future dearly

Many Australian parents choose family daycare for its flexible hours of operation and homelike environment, and so they can keep siblings together. Which is why the rorting of this system by some operators is so concerning: to the Turnbull government, the states and territories, to honest, high-quality family daycare educators and to taxpayers.

We all have a role to play in ensuring the important work family daycare provides is of a high quality, that it supports children and uses taxpayer funding for the right reasons.

During the past three years the Coalition has acted. Some have criticised this action but there is no question it has strengthened the sector and empowered those genuine, high-quality services. But there is clearly more to do.

The facts and figures from public reports through the years have been repeated in the media again this week and call attention to the loopholes and flaws that have existed and that the Coalition has been closing since 2013.

We’ve been closing those loopholes as quickly as we find them but we are partners in this process and it is up to the states and territories to fulfil their responsibilities as the level of government primarily responsible for regulating childcare providers to ensure quality and compliance.

Each dollar that is rorted from the system is a dollar of waste that our budget simply can’t sustain when we are already stretching to find every dollar possible to ensure that children are well prepared for the start of their educational journey.

And it is not acceptable for an operator to withhold key information about significant incidents among educators that may make them unsuitable to look after children.

While all of these things have been expected all along, sadly it now needs to be spelled out in black and white so that an element of our society no longer flouts expectations.

May's grammar school plans 'put six years of educational progress at risk'

heresa May’s plans to open new grammar schools could put at risk years of progress towards a rigorous education for all children, the Conservative former education secretary Nicky Morgan has said.

        

The MP, who performed the role under David Cameron until July, said plans to increase academic selection were at best a distraction and at worst “risk actively undermining six years of progressive education reform”.

Morgan is the most senior Tory to speak out against May’s plans, although Neil Carmichael, the Conservative chair of the education select committee, has also expressed reservations.

But, she added: “I believe that an increase in pupil segregation on the basis of academic selection would be at best a distraction from crucial reforms to raise standards and narrow the attainment gap, and at worse risks actively undermining six years of progressive education reform.

The Department for Education’s white paper was published under Morgan’s leadership earlier this year. The plans had no provisions for the return of grammar schools, and May has been criticised for appearing to introduce a policy not present in the Tory’s 2015 election manifesto.

It’s A Violation of A Child’s Right to Quality Education

The chairperson of the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Kripa Amar Alva, has termed the ongoing process of redeployment of additional teachers in schools as violation of a child’s right to quality education.

         

Ms. Alva told reporters here on Saturday that she had fixed an appointment with the Chief Minister on Wednesday. “Following that meeting, the commission will take a stand for the welfare of children,” she said.Ms. Alva said the commission has received nearly 300 complaints from Dakshina Kannada and other parts of the State questioning the process of redeployment of teachers.

Instead of wielding the stick right away, Ms. Alva said the commission had discussions with teachers, School Development and Monitoring Committee members and activists. She also had a detailed meeting with Primary Education Minister Tanvir Sait. Ms. Alva said that the formula on which the number of additional teachers was calculated is as per the RTE Act that prescribes one teacher for 30 students.

The commission was concerned over problems caused to students because of redeployment. “Unfortunately the Principal Secretary (for Primary Education) is not understanding it,” she said. Ms. Alva said that with the redeployment of teachers, the State government has defeated the efforts put in by the commission in enrolling new students to government schools. She said that the commission has so far not received orders of the Chairman of Child Welfare Committee, Udupi, ordering status quo in the process of redeployment of additional teachers from a few schools in Udupi.

Children around the world education

As children around the world return to school, there are more than two million in Syria who will not be able to join them, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) cautioned today, adding that another 400,000 are at risk of dropping out of school as a direct result of conflict, violence and displacement.

With the conflict in Syria now in its fifth year, some children in Syria have never known what it is like to enter a classroom, while others have lost up to four years of their schooling, the agency noted in a news release.

“Syria’s basic public services, including education, have been stretched to the maximum,” said Hanaa Singer, UNICEF Representative in Syria. “We need to do so much more to help the education institutions from collapsing and increase opportunities for children to access education across the country.”

School buildings are also affected by the conflict; 5,000 of them cannot be used as they have been destroyed, converted into shelters for displaced families, or used as bases for armed forces, UNICEF said. Often, the schools and their surroundings are unsafe, dangerous for children to reach, and at risk of deliberate attack. To take their exams last summer, at least 20 per cent of Syria’s children were forced to cross lines of fire.

UNICEF has been working with local partners on the ground to reach around three million children, and has implemented an informal education programme to reduce the number of out-of-school children. The agency is also printing school supplies and text books locally and distributing them to students.

“Even under the worst circumstances Syrian children keep asking to learn and go back to school because they are yearning for a better future and a chance to be influential” said Ms. Singer. “We must all invest in Syria’s children as they are the future of Syria and they will help rebuild their country when peace returns.”

Under the ‘No Lost Generation Initiative,’ UNICEF is starting a self-learning programme to reach 500,000 children who missed out on years of schooling. An accelerated learning programme is also aimed at helping 200,000 children catch up with their learning and eventually reintegrate into formal education. UNICEF is also rehabilitating damaged schools and creating prefabricated classrooms to accommodate 300,000 additional children.

UNICEF requires $68 million by end of the year, of which $12 million is needed immediately in order to continue responding to children’s educational needs.

In hopes of improving education

When Cornell superintendent Aaron Thomas interviews a potential administrator, he wants to know if the candidate will drive a school van. Administrators, including the superintendent, sometimes need to drive a parent to a teacher conference or a child to a doctor appointment.

At Grandview Upper Elementary School in the Highlands School District, it’s not unusual for principal Heather Hauser to find a bag of groceries on her desk, left anonymously by a staff member. The school started a food pantry after a student one Friday said he didn’t have anything to eat at home.

At Pittsburgh Faison K-5 in Homewood, the nonprofit Homewood Children’s Village provides extra sets of hands to help in the high-poverty school, among them a community school site director, four den advisers who help tutor and four social work interns who call families when children are absent and find ways to help.
School isn’t about just reading, writing and arithmetic.

Using their own staff and community partners, public schools are finding ways to address the many needs of children — such as hunger, homelessness, violence in their homes or communities, grief, mental health issues and inadequate clothing — that are barriers to their learning.

“The issues that kids have are not left at the schoolhouse door,” said Baldwin High School social worker Annette Fiovaniss.

Ms. Hauser recalled a child who sometimes melted down in the morning. “The first thing I would do is say, ‘Let me see your feet.’ When he didn’t have socks on, I knew that day for him was difficult.”

She got him clean socks at the nurse’s office. “That helped put his day back together,” she said.

While some researchers found teachers are the most important school-related factor, outside factors — including individual and family characteristics — may have four to eight times the impact as teachers do on student achievement, according to a Rand Corp. report.

Kellie Irwin, who has been a school social worker in Woodland Hills for more than 30 years, said, “A lot of my job is trying to get the kids to a place they can learn. … You can’t expect a child to score well on the Keystone Exams or the algebra test or whatever subject you want if they are hungry, they don’t have proper clothing or they don’t know where they’re going to sleep that night.”
In Allegheny County, all school districts provide free or reduced-price school lunch to needy students. Most districts also serve breakfast, and a few offer a snack, too. In Pittsburgh and a handful of other districts, so many students are needy that all get the food free.

Some agencies or volunteers help to provide food to take home on Fridays as well, including a new effort by the Buhl Foundation in partnership with the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and FOCUS North America, an Orthodox Christian organization, that this fall will begin providing weekend food for nearly 2,000 North Side students.

Some schools provide clothes for students as needed. Pittsburgh Langley K-8 in Sheraden has coats on hand in the winter. Baldwin High School staff donated clothes for a needy student when an email told of the need and the sizes. For years, Pittsburgh Lincoln PreK-5 has had a washer and dryer to help students whose clothes are dirty.

Some of the barriers, such as food and housing insecurity, are related to poverty. Nationwide, 22 percent of children under age 18 are living in poverty, with 19 percent in Pennsylvania, according to Annie E. Casey Foundation data from 2013, the latest available figures.

At the same time, many students are receiving human services. In Pittsburgh Public Schools, 53 percent of the students had prior involvement with at least one of 14 child welfare, behavioral health, support programs, intellectual disability and juvenile justice programs, according to the county Department of Human Services. In the Clairton School District, the figure was 74 percent.
Students receiving services face challenges to do well in school, or even to show up. In Pittsburgh Public Schools, more than half of the students who missed 20 percent of the school year in 2011-12 are involved in the human services system, according to a county report. Most students who missed that much school have GPAs that fall below 2.5, according to the report.

Needs rise, staff shrinks

While many schools have staff members tackling social service needs, such resources are often limited.

On average, statewide in 2013-14 when K-12 public school enrollment totaled more than 1.7 million students, there was one guidance counselor for every 409 students. There was an average of the full-time equivalent of 1 nurse for every 877 students, with many school nurses traveling from one building to another. And in a state with 500 school districts, there was just the full-time equivalent of 250 social workers.

“I haven’t met one school which has enough social workers for the work they have,” said Samantha Murphy, resource services manager in the integrated services program of the county Department of Human Services.
Beyond their own staffs, schools also are relying on outside groups for help.