Category: Countries

The teaching profession has a retention rate of less than 80% (I’ve heard) of new staff. In the next 10 years, half the teachers active today will retire. This is going to be a huge problem. I’ve worked hard to get to the top in my career, but right now I’m not doing much that… Continue reading Teachers

In my new role, I’m supporting an event for Priority Schools of NSW. As far as I can make out, these are schools where the students consistently get poor marks and have literacy / numeracy problems. One of the speakers today put up some interesting census statistics relevant to the kind of students that live… Continue reading Native Tongue

I forgot to buy a train ticket this morning. Each week, I buy a ticket that will get me to Waverton, which is the last stop in the zone of my office. It’s now habit to use that ticket and of course it gets me through the gate at Hornsby, but it won’t get me… Continue reading Train Tickets

I’ve rejoined the masses in the daily routine of work. No longer is every day a weekday and every day a weekend. No longer am I working dawn to dusk on my own projects. I now have to rush out of the house to cram into a train to be at work on time. But… Continue reading 9 to 5

Let me drop the aboriginal child sex abuse issue for a while to tackle something really important. When I was in Belgium, I used to buy honey from a specialist shop that sold nothing but different types of honey from all over the world. I managed to try about ten types, but nothing compared with… Continue reading Spreadable Honey

As soon as I turned on the radio this morning, I heard the newsreader saying that a new report has found that indigenous communities can manage themselves. How arrogant and condescending, I thought. But when I looked it up on the net, I instead found an article from last year that stated that this expectation… Continue reading Can Indigenous Communities Govern Themselves?

I’ve got a lot of issues to catch up on now that I have access to my blog again, but one that deserves immediate attention is the issue of sexual abuse of children in aboriginal communities. A report was released on the 30th of April outlining the issue to the Northern Territory government. It seems… Continue reading Child Sex Abuse in Aboriginal Communities

It’s taken a while, but I’m finally starting to feel like I’m home. The problems of moving in seemed endless – missed calls for white goods delivery, missing boxes in the shipment, missing parts of just about everything I unpacked, missing stereo components, no signal for wireless internet, skyrocketing phone bills just to name a… Continue reading Home at last

I’ve picked up the keys to my new flat. It’s a short term got-to-get-out-and-take-control-of-my-life rental choice, so it’s bright, warm and clean. Those were the minimum requirements for enabling me to enjoy my life enough to feel confident about getting out and chasing down contracts, or potentially a new job. The bedrooms are small, but… Continue reading Sold on a flat

I spent a sunny weekend walking 26km or so from Otford to Bundeena – the length of the coastal border of the Royal National Park. I was ‘leading’ the group of five friends since I’d done the walk in parts in my school days, more than 20 years ago. Some things have changed – noticeably… Continue reading Whales off Sydney Coast