June

Alexandria Park Community School has brought back to life the Aboriginal tradition of making bark canoes – with award-winning results. Find out more.

When school returned for 2008, Lindfield East Public School welcomed students and staff with a riot of colour, dance and fireworks. The lunar New Year concert attended by 1,200 parents, students and teachers is just one initiative to involve parents of Asian background in the school. Read more here.

The education department will have new powers to seek court orders against students or their parents under a State Government plan to ensure children of compulsory school age are enrolled and attending school. Find out more.

With schools and students increasingly “jumping online” the department’s new web-based magazine Click gives teachers and parents a valuable guide to information communications technology (ICT). Learn more here.

The Sydney Royal Easter Show is an eagerly anticipated event for dozens of public schools that enter their animals, vegetables and minerals into competition – often walking away with a sash or two. Read more here.

Wilcannia Central School has a renewed focus on learning with the establishment of a kinaesthetic class. For the past two years targeted students in Year 3 to 6 have combined outdoor and culturally specific activities – such as fishing, building shelters and campfires – with maths and science syllabus outcomes. Read more here.

Students across the state are being inspired and challenged by exhibitions of outstanding work from the 2007 HSC examinations in design and technology and textiles and design. Find out more.

A group of south-western Sydney students is gaining a better understanding of its local ecosystem through a middle years’ science and technology project involving the ICT Innovations Centre at Macquarie University. Learn more here.

Year 5 students from the Pittwater Community of Schools are benefiting from an enrichment program that offers extension activities across a range of subjects. Find out more.

Kingscliff High School student Larissa E is literally a shooting star, having been named among the winners in the prestigious Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize. Read more here.

Uncle Joe and Aunty Pearl Trindall raised seven of their own children, but there are literally hundreds more youngsters they encouraged to get a good education.

The respected Gomeroi elders, now both in their 80s, established the Birrelee Multi-functional childcare service in Tamworth, which has provided early educational support to Aboriginal children for the past 20 years. Read more here.

Located at Shortland on the western outskirts of Newcastle, the Hunter Wetlands Centre provides school programs through a partnership with the Wetlands Environmental Education Centre (WEEC), one of the 23 environmental centres operated by the NSW education department. Find out more.

The hopes and ambitions of country folk are often completely wrung dry by years of “blazing desolation”. In these circumstances good news is always welcome and for the people of Grenfell in western NSW it came by the ‘cattle’ truckload when agriculture students from The Henry Lawson High School won several major prizes at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. Read more here.

Budding young artists from Glenfield Public School have been selected to take part in the South Western Sydney region Gifted and Talented Primary School Program, which operates out of Fairfield High School. Find out more.

Fairfield High School student Gillian Perez is working on a canvas, which will eventually belong to Matthew Quinn, CEO of Stockland property group. His mate, Michael Hawker, chief of the Insurance Australia Group, has commissioned Gillian to do a landscape painting of his home. Both come with a $4,000 price tag. Read more here.

An arts-based project at Miller Technology High School in Sydney’s south west is helping to keep students engaged in learning while offering them skills development to forge new educational pathways. Find out more.

Students at the John Richardson School in Wollongong, who are also residents of Keelong Juvenile Justice Centre, are exhibiting their art work this month at an exhibition that opens in Wollongong. Read more here.

“Sculpture From Within” was the clever name of an exhibition of work created by students at Sunning Hill Education and Training Centre inside Juniperina Juvenile Justice Centre at Lidcombe. Find out more.