UNE School of Education

🚨Calling secondary school teachers!🚨

Can you provide some insights from your classroom practices to help one of our PhD students?

Teachers across all Australian states and territories and across sectors are invited to participate.

Please complete the survey here: http://bit.ly/4f7kimy

Thank you!!

In good news for the early childhood sector Tuesday, the Australian Government announced another two years of funding to support continuing the 15% wage rise for educators in services that limit fee increases.

Building on reforms to strengthen the safety in early education and care, participating services must meet the National Quality Standard by July 2027, or they will either lose the funding package or have it suspended.

UNE early childhood education researcher Associate Professor Marg Rogers says this is a step in the right direction to better support for struggling sector, but there’s a case for more to be done.

Writing for the Women's Agenda, she notes a number of issues that still need to be addressed, such as the lack of educators in regional, rural and remote areas.

And, she says, there have been strong arguments put forward for nationalising early learning or for universal care, offering three days of free early childhood per week.

“Whatever happens, she writes, “we all need to keep advocating for reforms to improve the wellbeing, status, conditions and pay of our educators. Our children, families, communities and the economy need educators who want to work and stay in the sector.”

Read more at the link below.

Progress as educators guaranteed continued 15% wage rise but more support needed A win, yes. But we must keep advocating for reforms to improve the wellbeing, status, conditions and pay of early childhood educators, writes Associate Professor Marg Rogers

Our warmest congratulations to UNE alumnus Geoffrey Wellesley Walker, who turns 100 years old today.

We thought some UNE merch was in order to celebrate this impressive milestone – including his very own Booloominbah snow globe. Not too many snowflakes fall in the Northern Rivers of NSW!

Geoff was one of the first health and physical education advisors appointed by the NSW Department of Education and he and his colleagues introduced many of the school programs we now take for granted, like swimming lessons, s*x education and healthy eating.

His career spanned more than 40 years – and many kilometres travelling to bush schools – after leaving Armidale Teachers’ College, and Geoff added a UNE Bachelor of Arts to his qualifications in the 1960s.

“Some teachers saw teaching as a springboard. For me, it was a vocation,” he says.

Congratulations, Geoff, on your centenary and thank you for your important contributions to public education.

Read Geoff's full story via our link in comments.

🔗💚

Don't miss UNE's annual Myall Creek Symposium at Oorala Aboriginal Centre UNE Friday 5 June. Featuring an incredible line-up of speakers. Free to attend!

Know a UNE graduate like Andrea who is quietly changing the world or leading in their field?

Andrea is a UNE Rising Star Award winner of 2025, in recognition of her exceptional leadership in inclusive early childhood education, championing culturally and linguistically diverse children and families while mentoring educators.

Who in our community inspires you?
Nominate them now for the ⭐️2026 UNE Alumni Awards⭐️

More information can be found, via the link in comments 👇

Graduating with a Bachelor of Education (Secondary Arts), mother-of-five Crystal Primmer says she “feels an overwhelming sense of pride” in achieving her childhood dream, and in everything it took to get there ...

“As a little girl, I would sit my sister Katie down in our small lounge room and insist she play ‘schools’ with me for hours,” Crystal says. “I was always the teacher and while she often lost interest, I never did. I loved it; instinctively, it felt like where I belonged,” she says.

“After I left school, I went straight into the workforce, married the love of my life and I had our first beautiful daughter at 24. Uni seemed unattainable and my dreams of becoming a teacher drifted into the background.”

Crystal had a role in administration, “just working to pay the bills”, when Katie tragically died by su***de. Then, just three years later, shortly after the birth of her third child, Crystal was diagnosed with stage three bowel cancer.

“From that moment, everything changed. What followed was surgery and six months of physically and emotionally exhausting chemotherapy while I continued to raise our young children. Yet, through that experience, something became undeniably clear: life is fragile and too short not to chase your dreams.”

So, at the age of 32, Crystal embraced the flexibility UNE offered to pursue her long-held teaching ambitions.

“My family had always come first, so this was not easy. I studied while breastfeeding. I wrote essays late at night when the kids were in bed. I listened to lectures in the car during school pick-ups. I just fitted my studies in wherever I could because I knew it was what I wanted and needed to do.”