Labour force February 2017

Labour force figures released today by the ABS show that seasonally adjusted employment fell by 6,400 over the month, to 11,998,800. Despite this fall, employment has risen by 104,600 (or 0.9 per cent) over the year.   Encouragingly, full-time employment increased by 27,100 in February, to 8,158,900, while part-time employment fell by 33,500, to 3,840,000.…

Action needed now to retain Australia’s leading education system: Minister

New reports released overnight have confirmed Australia risks falling behind the world unless educators and policymakers take action to target students and schools who are up to three years behind higher performing peers.  Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham said the full Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report from the OECD, the full…

Australian pre-schoolers picking up foreign languages in lightning speed

New independent analysis of the Turnbull Government’s early learning languages app has found children are grasping foreign languages at lightning speed by using the play-based program rather than conventional measures like flash cards. Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham said the Evaluation of the Early Learning Languages Australia (ELLA) apps carried out by Swinburne…