Page 3221 - Week 10 - Thursday, 17 September 2015
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by approved teachers; recognise, develop and promote professional learning; and maintain community confidence in the teaching profession. TQI is responsible for the registration of teachers, developing and applying codes of professional practice for teachers and accrediting education courses.
In this year’s budget the government also provided additional resources to support increased numbers of students with a disability to access and participate in education. This will result in new and innovative programs so that students with learning disabilities have the best opportunity to learn. A $3.9 million investment will see students with a disability be provided extra resources to increase participation in education and for transport of students with disability to ACT public schools.
Learning a language is another core component of the ACT curriculum framework delivered across our public school sector. It enables students to extend their thinking and reasoning skills and apply these in other areas of learning and in processing knowledge. There is a comprehensive program of language education throughout the ACT, with options for students in every region of the city. Various schools in the ACT provide the opportunity to learn French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian and Hindi. Learning a language has never been more important than it is today in our increasingly mobile and globalised world.
The gifted and talented students policy 2014 reflects the ACT government’s continued interest in pursuing the very best provisions to ensure the very best for our gifted and talented students. The aim of the policy is to ensure that every child has the opportunity to receive developmentally appropriate programs regardless of their socioeconomic or cultural background, based on their level of giftedness and those other factors which are individual to each student. Once a student has been identified as gifted, schools can use appropriate educational interventions and strategies to cater for them.
Developmentally appropriate programs for gifted and talented students include a combination of provisions to allow students access to meaningful learning opportunities, such as a differentiated curriculum incorporating advanced learning through enrichment experiences; counselling interventions; acceleration options and grouping. These provisions are dependent on each other and are strongly supported by research as central to increasing learning outcomes for gifted individuals.
Parents play a critical role in their child’s learning. When families and schools work together the outcomes for children are better. Research shows the benefits of parental engagement in education include improved academic outcomes and children being more motivated to do well, and improved behaviour and greater confidence. In February Minister Burch led the country in launching a new publication, Progressing parental engagement, with handy fact sheets to help families and schools to better understand what parental engagement is, why it matters, how it works and how it is best achieved. The minister urged school boards and parent associations to use this document to generate conversation about parental engagement and what it looks like in their schools. I congratulate the minister for her national leadership in this area.
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