Latest news with #studentengagement
RNZ News
06-07-2025
- General
- RNZ News
Alternative education rule change would change lives
Former alternative education student Hayley-Jane with her former teachers Rose McIlhone and Nathaniel Hakeagaiki. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen Tutors and teachers at last-chance education programmes say allowing them to keep struggling secondary students beyond the age of 16 would have a life-changing impact. Alternative education programmes enrol about 2000 teenagers a year who are at risk of disengaging from school, or already have disengaged. At a recent seminar in Wellington, their staff told RNZ they had seen a big increase in enrolments by girls and young teens in recent years. They also warned warn that intermediate-age school children increasingly needed their services too. The programmes provided small-group tutoring, but staff said most students were not ready to learn until they had worked through social and mental issues, a process that could take months. Philo Heka is the manager of Koraunui in Stokes Valley, one of just two marae-based alt ed providers in the country. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen Former alternative education student Hayley-Jane said it had a huge impact on her life and on many of the other students she was with. But she had to leave when she turned 16. One of her former teachers Rose McIlhone - now an English teacher at Te Whare Taiohi, the alt ed programme run by the BGI boys and girls institute in Wellington - said the schemes would make an even bigger difference if they could keep students beyond the age of 16. "I think it would be huge. I think we need a year to build those relationships and then following that a year to do some real learning and help them connect to what comes next," she said. She said students arrived with complex needs and they increasingly seemed to have disengaged with learning earlier in their schooling. "Sometimes they come with mental health concerns, lots of trauma, but perhaps now there's bigger gaps in their learning and they may be disengaged from school at a younger age, so it starts happening at intermediate," she said. Jo Maunder is the head teacher at RLC alternative education in Wainuiomata. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen RLC alternative education in Wainuiomata head teacher Jo Maunder said when she started in the field 25 years ago, 90 percent of the students were boys. "But now we have almost half-and-half boys and girls, so there's been a lot more girls coming in to alternative ed in the last, I would say, 10 years. Big change in the mental health needs of our students, huge change in that, and also quite a big change in the amount of letters after their names. We've got ADH, ADD, ODD," she said. Maunder said she was also seeing more students in the younger age groups. "The students are getting younger and younger. We're actually only funded for three years from when the turn 13 to when they turn 16 but obviously when you end up in high school you're 12 so yeah, we are getting 12-year-olds," she said. Maunder said every alternative education provider should be funded to employ a registered teacher. "We are the last stop for students for formal education in New Zealand and our funding is so low that we can't even afford to hire teachers," she said. Philo Heka - the manager of Koraunui in Stokes Valley, one of just two marae-based alt ed providers in the country - said students should be able to choose to enrol in alternative education instead "It should be open to all young people who need that time out from school. I think if kids have a bit of time out, re-set, re-focus, things might be a little bit easier for them," she said. Lloyd Martin says three-quarters of the students engaging in alternative education did not return to regular secondary school. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen Lloyd Martin had been involved with alternative education for many years and recently completed doctoral research on it. He said the biggest change the sector needed was agreement on its purpose. "To get there, you have to fail in the school system. Perhaps a better pathway would be to recognise who needs to be there," he said. "There's 1800 places funded I think from memory. There's a lot more than 1800 kids who are missing school and need a better environment and why should you have to fail to get there." Martin said alternative education was officially regarded as something that fixed kids so they could return to regular secondary school, but three-quarters of its students did not return to school. "There is a group of kids often because of adversity and the stuff that's happened in their lives who just need a different environment to learn in. If they were from wealthy families, their parents would put them in a Steiner school or something like that," he said. Martin said schools now recognised the effects of neurodiversity on students, but they had not yet recognised the effects of trauma and adversity. "If we asked what do these kids need we would end up with a different model of funding," he said. Martin said more spending on alternative education would be a good investment for society. "It's probably a lot cheaper doing something when they're 14 than when they're 21 and in the justice system or stuck in the welfare system," he said. "If we could break some of those trajectories, shift some of them, we could save money in the longer term and be more humane in the process." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Washington Post
04-07-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
With American democracy under strain, students debate its resilience
A dozen students gathered around a classroom table one afternoon last fall, their professor's dog napping in a patch of sunlight on the floor, to do something they rarely did anywhere else on campus: talk about politics. All first-year students start their time at Johns Hopkins University by choosing a seminar. These 12, wildly varied in backgrounds, ideologies and interests, had signed up for 'Democratic Erosion.'
ABC News
01-07-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Education review to consider options for SA non-mainstream schooling
Boosting student engagement, improving school attendance and easing pressures on teachers are among topics that will be tackled by a review into non-mainstream education options in South Australia. About 10,000 students participate each year in non-mainstream schooling programs across the state, including home schooling, online learning and at various dedicated sites. According to the state government, such programs are designed for students who are not able to attend mainstream schools for reasons "including disability, behaviour, geographical isolation, mental health concerns, long-term illness, incarceration" and other complexities. Sites include the Bowden Brompton Community School and the Open Access College, as well as the state's six Better Behaviour Centres which "provide a service for students who are showing signs of disengagement from school". Education Minister Blair Boyer said students with complex needs represented a "growing cohort" across the country, and that the review would examine how options to support them — including in regional areas — could be bolstered. "The numbers in these sites are growing a lot and not just here in South Australia, and I felt like we weren't looking closely enough at whether or not we had the capacity to cope for future growth," he told ABC Radio Adelaide. The government said home schooling and Better Behaviour Centres had "high enrolments from children and young people with disabilities", and that the review would therefore consider what "barriers exist for young people with disabilities, to determine if this is a localised or system-wide issue". "The review that I'm announcing today is looking at all the options that we have through the public education system in South Australia, trying to cater for students who aren't doing well in a mainstream setting," Mr Boyer said. Mr Boyer said the review into non-mainstream schooling was partly prompted by a need to address the array of factors that contribute to non-attendance. The government has previously announced it is considering ways to crackdown on what Mr Boyer described as "chronic truancy" across the public education sector, including by the possible introduction of expiation notices for parents. In May, Mr Boyer told the ABC that while he was not proposing "we start handing out expiation notices willy-nilly", the situation had reached the point where "we need to try some new, different and bold things". He said another possible option was prosecuting parents who were actively preventing their children from attending school. "One of the things that's a bit of a loophole that I've seen has been used by some of those parents is enrolling a child in a school interstate — they're not moving interstate but they are enrolling their child in a school that is interstate," Mr Boyer said in May. "It's very hard for us to determine if that young person is attending that school in an online sense as they have committed to doing, and that's used as a way of getting around the current provisions." The review of the non-mainstream sector would be conducted by the Education Department and completed by the end of the year, the government said. Mr Boyer was today asked about school violence and said that while the most recent data showed it had dropped "for the first time in five years" in high schools, there had been an increase in violence "in primary schools, particularly around dysregulated young people". He acknowledged that growing classroom challenges were having a deterrent effect on would-be teachers. "There's a reason that people aren't choosing to do it," he said. "We do ask our schools to do a lot more of this kind of work around managing behaviour than they ever used to, and that is a challenge for our staff and a challenge for education systems everywhere in the world. "Staff do feel like they are dealing with a lot of things outside of the kind of the core teaching things that motivated them to be a teacher in the first place and we have to find a way of better supporting them. "This review is part of us trying to do that."
Forbes
13-06-2025
- General
- Forbes
Unplugged & Learning
By the time Jada, an eighth grader at Detroit Achievement Academy, settles into her morning routine with her class, she already knows she won't be pulled into a group chat or sneak a glance at TikTok between classes. Her phone is zipped away in her bookbag, self-secured and self-managed by her, as it is for every student in the building. And she likes it that way. 'I thought I'd hate it at first,' Jada admits. 'But honestly, it's way better. My classmates and I actually talk to each other at school. And I'm not stressing about what's happening on my phone.' Across the country, more schools are coming to the same conclusion: cellphones, for all their utility, are making it harder for kids to learn, focus, and just be kids. At Detroit Achievement, the no-cellphone policy is more than just about reducing screen time. It's about protecting time, and space, for students to grow as people. For Kirstin Stoeckle, Director of Upper School at Detroit Achievement Academy, the decision to ban cellphones wasn't about punishment. It was about presence. 'When people outside our school community meet our middle schoolers, they almost always comment on how engaged they are, with each other and at school, and how they still seem like joyful, happy kids.' That sense of childhood - of the good kind of boredom, the kind that leads to creativity instead of doomscrolling - is something Stoeckle and her team are determined to protect. In her view, phones aren't just distractions; they're accelerants. They speed kids toward social pressures they may not be ready for and pull them away from the small, formative moments that make up a school day. 'We didn't ban phones so that our kids would stay kids for longer,' she explains, 'but that did certainly happen, and it has been beautiful for everyone involved. They laugh a lot at lunch. They play outside more, often silly games that they created themselves. We're seeing relationships deepen - in person, in real time.' A growing body of research supports what schools like Detroit Achievement already see every day. In a study spanning four English cities, researchers at the London School of Economics found that banning phones led to a 6.4% increase in test scores - equivalent to an extra hour of instructional time per week. The gains were even more pronounced for low-achieving students, effectively narrowing the achievement gap without a single change to curriculum or staffing. Further emphasizing the impact on economically disadvantaged students, the study noted that the lowest-achieving students benefited the most, with their test scores increasing by 14.23% of a standard deviation. In Norway, a similar experiment with middle schools showed students not only performed better academically but were also more likely to go on to advanced secondary programs. The policy didn't just help kids learn more, it helped them believe in what they could do next. Here in the U.S., schools are catching on. The Bentonville School District in Arkansas banned phones and in just one year recorded a 57% reduction in verbal or physical aggression offenses and a 51% reduction in drug-related offenses, she said. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently announced a bill to make every school in Arkansas phone-free, an effort to re-invest in the mental wellbeing of the state's kids. In Michigan, new legislation is pushing public schools to adopt similar restrictions, while New York and Florida have already announced bell-to-bell bans in the coming school year. It's tempting to frame phone bans as a nostalgic return to 'how things used to be,' but the implications are much bigger. Constant access to devices doesn't just fragment attention; it rewires expectations. Students come to see every lull as a void to be filled by content, not conversation. Every moment of discomfort - social, intellectual, emotional - gets outsourced to a screen. In that environment, deeper learning suffers. So does resilience. Teachers talk about the difference: students who once rushed to Google an answer now pause to wrestle with a hard question. Others who used to eat lunch in silence, eyes locked on their phones, are laughing in circles of friends. It's not magic—it's policy. But the result feels magical. What makes cellphone bans so compelling is their simplicity. There's no need for massive budget increases or sweeping reform. Just a bookbag or a locked pouch and a clear expectation. Is it a silver bullet? No. But it might be the cleanest, fastest way to reclaim time, attention, and connection in American schools. As for Jada, she's already convinced. 'When we went to visit high schools, kids were just by themselves on their phones, like they were in a different place.' she says. 'But, I'm actually here, like, in reality. Does that make sense?' Yeah. It does make sense, Jada.
CBC
09-06-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Local police services have different plans as province pushes return of cops to schools
As the Ontario government moves to bring police officers back into schools, two local police services share different reactions to the news. While the St. Thomas Police Service (STPS) is on board with the idea of bringing back School Resource Officer (SRO) programs, the London Police Service (LPS) expressed less interest. Nonetheless, both police services said officer engagement with students is an important priority. "I think that this is the right step forward," said Marc Roskamp, the St. Thomas chief of police. "[The new bill] would allow police officers back into the schools and the traditional school resource officer program." Roskamp's endorsement follows closely behind Education Minister Paul Calandra's announcement of the Supporting Children and Students Act, which aims to consolidate ministry oversight over school boards and requires the return of SRO programs if local police offer them. In 2021, the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB), the largest in the region, paused its SRO program and, in 2024, resolved not to re-initiate it due to concerns from students over surveillance and feelings of unease. The STPS has been vocal in its dissatisfaction with removing SROs and has also reported an uptick in officers being called to schools. Following a firearm scare at a school in January, Roskamp told reporters those incidents have risen by 55 per cent since 2021, with officers now attending schools once every two days. In his eyes, the police are a clear part of the solution to the problem. "Presence is deterrence," Roskamp said. "Whether expected or unexpected, visits to schools might reduce those incidents of violence, and what we're talking about is assaults, sexual assaults, bullying, it's all happening." That's not to imply deterrence is the only goal of officers in schools, he added. "When we're in the schools, it's never been about enforcement or intelligence gathering. It's always been about high fives and smiles and interacting and engaging with youth." Roskamp said his police service is engaged with local school boards and is working to "re-establish, refresh and reimagine the role of the school resource officer." London Police's response to the question of whether they would offer an SRO program to the board included an effort to distance the force from official SRO programs. "We have moved away from the title 'School Resource Officer' and instead focus on broader community engagement," said Peter Testa, head of the LPS community mobilization and support branch. Testa said the LPS has worked closely with school boards in the city to support students, with the goal of promoting positive behaviour and enhancing safety through "mutual respect." He also said the LPS supports boards without the use of an SRO program "by having our officers attending and presenting when requests are made." Regardless of the intentions as stated by police, some students remain opposed to police presence in schools in general. One of those students is Shivani Vimal, who is in grade 11 at the TVDSB's Lord Dorchester Secondary School. "I firmly believe that police officers do not belong in schools. I believe there's a time and place for security personnel, but schools are spaces for learning, growth and trust, and that's just not the place for police officers," she said. A common thread in opposition to officers in schools, especially as stated in the past by previous TVDSB student trustees, is a concern that students from marginalized communities could be made doubly uncomfortable by police presence. "I just feel that it would harm BIPOC students, and it would impact them a lot more than people think," Vimal said. Vimal said the opinions of her peers seem to be divided. However, the prevailing thought is that students "don't want to feel like they're being watched. And they also believe that police officers in schools might just escalate situations." She said she'd rather see funding for social workers and counsellors as a solution, but if the police do return, the process needs to be student-centric and collaborative.
