A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Sarah Whittle, University of Melbourne and Kate Bray, University of Melbourne The negative mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are clear, but there is particular concern children will be most affected in the long run. By the end of March school closures were impacting 91% of the world’s student population and are still affecting [...]
Natalie Lander, Deakin University and Jo Salmon, Deakin University Regular physical activity is linked to improvements in physical and mental health including anxiety and depression. It can also improve cognitive functioning such as attention and memory, and academic achievement in children. But only 14% of Australian children get the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity [...]
Associate Professor Terry Bowles and Emma PhillipsEmpathy is one of the major ways we come to understand ourselves and those around us. It is often described as a broad capacity, ability or skill that enables people to perceive and resonate with other’s emotions – effectively, it allows us to ‘walk’ in another person’s shoes. Empathy [...]
Children, youth and families are critical members of the pandemic response. Our team at Monash Education is conducting an Australian-wide longitudinal study to understand the educational and wellbeing impact of COVID-19 on children, parents, adults and families. So far, 1987 adults and 256 youth participants have completed the survey. Preliminary findings suggest that parents don't [...]
Over the weekend, Victoria's Minister for Education, James Merlino, announced that the individual impact of COVID-19 will be taken into account for every Year 12 student in the state when calculating their VCE score and ATAR. Under usual circumstances, individual students are assessed for special consideration on a case-by-case basis. But this year, the Victorian Curriculum and [...]
Brett Healey, Curtin University First, a grammar quiz. Which of these sentences do you think begins the Eric Carle classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar? a) A little egg lay on a leaf in the light of the moon. b) On a leaf, in the light of the moon, a little egg lay. c) In the [...]
Nadine Zacharias, Swinburne University of Technology and Rola Ajjawi, Deakin University Students failing at university is not a problem of “extremes”, as federal Education Minister Dan Tehan would have it. A large proportion of students fail units of study. And, surprisingly, our research found about a third do nothing about it. However, students who received [...]
Phyllis Sharps, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Lucine Francis, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing The first U.S. schools have reopened with in-person classes, and they are already setting off alarm bells about how quickly the coronavirus can spread. Georgia’s Cherokee County School District, north of Atlanta, had over 100 confirmed COVID-19 cases [...]
Sally Larsen, University of New England and Callie Little, University of New England Whether to hold a child back from starting school when they are first eligible is a question faced by many parents in Australia each year. If you start a child at school too early, there’s a fear they may fall behind. But [...]
Educator’s focus and dedication calls upon much more than teaching the academic curriculum. As part and parcel of the nature of their work, they often become mentors, counsellors, confidants, emotional coaches and in some cases ‘surrogate carers,’ to their students. Educating young people is both gratifying and emotionally taxing. Educators are clever, stoic and remarkable beings whose [...]
