Outdoor education programs can be life-changing for students, who develop crucial social skills and a newfound relationship with Australia's natural environment. Schools around Australia are creating interesting and innovative ways to help their students become familiar with nature while also developing important personal skills such as confidence, resilience and independence. Queenwood Deputy Principal Mrs Belinda Moore shares how the Queenwood Outdoor Education Program pushes the boundaries of what can be achieved on camp while maintaining attendance levels of over 95% across the school.

Spotlight On: Why All Children Need School

19 June 2020

I have the clearest memory of watching my two-year-old son exploring the back garden. A very thin twig was poking out from the hedge. He picked up a rock about the size of my fist and slowly, with infinite care, he held the rock gently on the top of the trembling twig… and let go. The rock thumped to the ground, and my son learnt something about gravity and the relationship between the diameter and strength of a tree branch.

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Failing Safely

7 March 2020

It is dangerous to generalise about boys and girls because there are children everywhere who defy the stereotypes. Nevertheless, one tends to have specific conversations with boys or girls over and over again.

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One School's Bold Plan To Get Teenagers Reading

12 January 2020

With the school's own research showing almost a third of Year 7 and 9 girls read for pleasure less than once a week, there was a "sense of urgency" to stem the decline, Ms Stone said. So from next year, the whole school will spend 20 minutes a day reading for pleasure.

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BYO Scholarship: An Innovative Path To Excellence

11 July 2018

The Build-Your-Own (BYO) Scholarship seeks to identify uniquely gifted and talented students who may otherwise go unrecognised.

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Drumbeat to Ditch NAPLAN is Growing Louder

11 May 2018

There is a tendency in education for apparently logical solutions to backfire. The NAPLAN system is a case in point.

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True Skill Demands Deep Knowledge

4 December 2017

We are presently grappling with some unsettling phenomena. One of these is the rejection of expertise.

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HSC & NAPLAN - A Better Way

8 May 2017

In principle it is hard to object to minimum standards for literacy and numeracy in the HSC.

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Virtue is its Own Reward

3 August 2016

Like most schools we have many ways of providing public recognition, but we do need to be judicious in how, and how much, we do it.

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