School News & Total Education Blog

March 28, 2014

In the previous post I talked about the recent presentation at the University of Southern Queensland by Robert Randall, the CEO of ACARA — the body charged with delivering the Australian Curriculum and NAPLAN. The second notable point from Robert’s talk was his statement that ACARA...

November 26, 2013

Graduation at any school is a special time and The School of Total Education is no exception. The family-friendly culture and the small class sizes at the school mean that the graduation ceremonies have an intimate atmosphere. Practically all the parents and children in the...

September 21, 2013

Recently we had a visit to the school from Lizzie Wagner, a consultant and presenter in the field of personal development and presentation. One of our parents had worked with Lizzie and created the opportunity for her to do a presentation to our secondary students while...

September 12, 2013

Last term I attended the annual dinner of the Toowoomba chapter of the Australian Council of Education Leaders. These dinners are always relaxed and collegiate with interesting speakers. The guest speaker on this occasion was no exception, being Professor Jan Thomas, the Vice Chancellor of the...

June 18, 2013

A couple of weeks ago I attended a lecture by Professor Fred Durvin at the Education Faculty of the University of Southern Queensland. Professor Durvin is from the University of Helsinki and his area of study is multiculturalism, linguistics and communication. He is a visiting...

June 14, 2013

On 27th May we were treated to two engaging presentations by leading Australian Psychologist, Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, on student well-being — one for teachers and one for parents. The talks were organised by Medicare Local and were open to the general public. We had over 150...

June 5, 2013

It is interesting how being involved in something can make you blind to its unique qualities. I sometimes feel this about core aspects of the School of Total Education. This was brought to mind by a recent conversation I had with our new teacher aid,...

February 27, 2013

When a school is working well, there is a natural creativity and growth happening that seems to transcend all the programs and plans and organised activities in place. I experienced this last year when I happened to hear that the Grade 7 Outs (as they are...