Functional Solutions International PTY LTD

Functional Solutions International PTY LTD Market Leaders in Educational Content & Library Automation. Empowering educators with smart software, real support, and a whole lot of heart.

Proudly Aussie-owned, and here for schools since 1986.

📕 CHAPTERS CLOSING ON TEACHER LIBRARIANS58 diocese school libraries. Teacher librarians axed from 2027.The associations ...
04/09/2026

📕 CHAPTERS CLOSING ON TEACHER LIBRARIANS

58 diocese school libraries. Teacher librarians axed from 2027.

The associations aren't mincing words.

ASLA: "Removing teacher librarians does not simply change who works in a school library - it changes what that library can provide to its students and teachers."

SLANSW: "There is a high risk that these school libraries will cease to function to the immeasurable detriment of students and learning outcomes."

We've watched exactly that happen.

A Queensland school. Over 3,500 students. They axed the librarian, then threw the entire collection into a skip bin.

Ten years later, under a new executive team, they're rebuilding it from scratch.

Ten years of students went through that school without a library.

You can rebuild a collection. You can't give those kids their ten years back.

Would you notice if it happened at your school?

This is what a teacher librarian actually does: https://zurl.co/XTRM7

🎬 📖 📱 One story. Three ways in. Nobody lifted a finger.This month our curators put Babe: Pig in the City in the TV4Ed TV...
02/09/2026

🎬 📖 📱 One story. Three ways in. Nobody lifted a finger.

This month our curators put Babe: Pig in the City in the TV4Ed TV Guide.

Discovery did the rest.

🎬 The film. On TV4Ed, curriculum tagged, ready to stream.

📖 The book. The Sheep-Pig, Dick King-Smith, 1983. The novel that started the whole thing, surfaced right beside it, because discovery already knew they belonged together.

📱 The eBook. Waiting for the moment every physical copy is out on loan.

A class watches the film. Three kids want the book. Two of them get one off the shelf and the third gets it on a screen in about four seconds.

Nobody catalogued a link. Nobody built a display. Nobody added a note to the record.

That's discovery. That's the FSI Difference. 💛

https://zurl.co/grl0z

📺 NEW: the TV4Ed TV Guide. One every month.Each month our curators go through what has just landed on TV4Ed and what is ...
31/08/2026

📺 NEW: the TV4Ed TV Guide. One every month.

Each month our curators go through what has just landed on TV4Ed and what is coming next, and pull out the ones worth your time.

Issue 01 is live.

Featured pick: Future You: Pathfinders. Years 3 to 6, five minutes.

Primary: BTN Specials: Science Kids · Play School: Sensational Senses, with Auslan translators · Life on Earth: Attenborough's Greatest Adventure · Babe: Pig in the City

Secondary: World War II With Tom Hanks · The Intouchables · Days That Shocked The World: September 11 · Changed Forever: The Making of Australia · The Teacher Who Promised the Sea

Year level, classroom focus and runtime already worked out for every entry.

Read it here: https://zurl.co/kPMbA

📄 And it comes as a poster. Two, actually. One primary, one secondary, sitting in Print Studio ready to print.

Every title on the poster has its own QR code. A student scans it and streams it. Nothing to search for, no links to email around.

TV4Ed admins, to grab them:

Log into SmartSuite / TV4Ed

Menu → Perks and Prints → Print Studio

Scroll to "What's New on TV4Ed"

Print it. Put it on the wall. That's the whole job.

New issue every month.

That's TV4Ed. That's the FSI Difference. 💛

🏉 Finals week starts Thursday.The most-watched title on TV4Education this term isn't a novel adaptation or a science ser...
31/08/2026

🏉 Finals week starts Thursday.

The most-watched title on TV4Education this term isn't a novel adaptation or a science series.

It's The Australian Dream.

More than a quarter of every play across our ten most-watched titles this term. Over twice the next title on the list.

Teachers found it on their own. Our job was making sure the system already knew what it teaches.

And it isn't one thing. It's three, in three different subjects.

📚 AC9E10LY01 — Year 10 English. How people and events are represented in texts.

🎬 AC9AMA10E02 — Media Arts 9/10. How media challenges and celebrates Australia's identity.

🧠 AC9HP10P05 — HPE 9/10. Challenging bias, stereotypes and discrimination.

One film. Three teachers. Three different units. Nobody had to work out where it fit.

A catalogue that tells you a title exists is a list. One that tells you what it teaches is a resource.

Tagged on the way in. Not when it got popular.

That's ACARA-Sync. That's the FSI Difference. 💛

https://zurl.co/256Rj

🎁 The Sunday ACARA-Sync DropAC9E5LE03 — Year 5 English, Literature."Recognise that the point of view in a literary text ...
30/08/2026

🎁 The Sunday ACARA-Sync Drop

AC9E5LE03 — Year 5 English, Literature.

"Recognise that the point of view in a literary text influences how readers interpret and respond to events and characters."

This is the hardest one to teach in the whole Year 5 Literature strand. Point of view is invisible. Kids don't notice it, because whoever is telling the story feels like the only way the story could be told.

Yesterday's quiz answer solves it.

Once I Was A Giant. Zeno Sworder. CBCA Picture Book of the Year 2026.

The narrator is a tree.

Not a child watching a tree. Not a story about a tree. The tree is telling you what happened to it. It stands for a very long time, and then it is cut down, and then it becomes a pencil.

Read that to a Year 5 class and ask one question: how would this story feel if the person with the saw told it?

They'll get there in about four seconds. And they'll have understood point of view properly, not as a definition to memorise but as something they just felt happen to them.

ACARA's own elaboration for this code asks students to discuss why an author might choose a particular point of view. Sworder chose the tree. A Year 5 can tell you exactly why.

That's AC9E5LE03. Done.

Your copy is already tagged. The code is already attached. It was attached before the awards were even announced, because it was tagged on the way in, not after someone won something.

You didn't have to do a thing.

That's ACARA-Sync. That's the FSI Difference. 💛

https://zurl.co/kmvD7

🎓 FSI Saturday Quiz Time. The answer.📚 Zeno Sworder.And here's the catch. There was never a second name to find. He writ...
29/08/2026

🎓 FSI Saturday Quiz Time. The answer.

📚 Zeno Sworder.

And here's the catch. There was never a second name to find. He writes them and he illustrates them. If you went looking for the illustrator behind someone else's words, you were looking for a person who doesn't exist.

The clues, unpacked:

The tree in Bendigo is real. No car, no television, so he spent his childhood outdoors, and there was one tree shaped right for climbing. Forty-odd years later he wrote a book from that tree's point of view. It gets cut down and turned into a pencil.

Once I Was A Giant. CBCA Picture Book of the Year 2026.

The soft spot for pencils has been sitting in his official bio since his first book. Nobody noticed it was a clue until he wrote a book about one.

The dot, the shrinking and the giant are his three picture books, in order. This Small Blue Dot in 2021. My Strange Shrinking Parents in 2023. Once I Was A Giant in 2026.

Now the part worth sitting with.

In 2021, that first book won him the CBCA award for New Illustrator. The newcomer prize.

In 2023, Picture Book of the Year.

In 2026, Picture Book of the Year again. Plus the Victorian Premier's Literary Award. Plus Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards, judged against every book published in Australia this year. Not the children's category. All of it.

Five years from newcomer to beating the entire industry. Three books. He draws at night, after his family has gone to bed.

The CBCA judges called it "a wonderful mixture of the sophisticated and complex."

This is what we mean by a Symphony of Stories.

A story about a tree that becomes the pencil that writes stories, drawn by the person who wrote it. And every kid who meets that book meets it because a teacher-librarian put it on a shelf, face out, where it could be found.

Illustrators get their name second. This week, he gets it first.

🎁 Stick around tomorrow. The Sunday ACARA-Sync Drop tells you exactly which curriculum code this book is already tagged with in your catalogue.

Happy Saturday from FSI. 💛

🎓 FSI Saturday Quiz TimeLast one for Book Week 2026. And it's not about an author.All week you've had kids in costumes, ...
28/08/2026

🎓 FSI Saturday Quiz Time

Last one for Book Week 2026. And it's not about an author.

All week you've had kids in costumes, parades, read-alouds, displays. Every one of those costumes came from a picture. Someone drew it first.

So this week, name the illustrator.

The clues:

🖊️ He was born on Christmas Day in Bendigo. The midwife arrived after he did.

🖊️ He grew up with no car and no television, so he spent his childhood outdoors. There was one particular tree he climbed. Decades later, that tree became a book.

🖊️ He studied Chinese literature and migration law at university, and then got a job washing dishes. After that: journalist, English teacher, consular officer in Shanghai, jewellery designer, Lifeline phone volunteer.

🖊️ His official bio says he is "a lover of all stationery but has a particular soft spot for pencils." That is a real sentence in a real author bio.

🖊️ His grandmother was a traditional brush and ink painter, and his own work owes a debt to Hokusai and Hiroshige.

🖊️ And his three picture books, in order, are titled around a dot, a shrinking, and a giant.

Reveal at 6pm. 💛
(No googling 😜)

👏 To the mums and dads. Last day of Book Week.The teacher-librarian planted the idea. Sent the note home. Put the poster...
28/08/2026

👏 To the mums and dads. Last day of Book Week.

The teacher-librarian planted the idea. Sent the note home. Put the poster up. Talked it up for weeks.

But you're the ones who actually made it happen.

You read the same book for the fortieth time because it's the one they wanted. You were still cutting cardboard at 11pm. You burnt a thumb on the hot glue gun. You fixed the wings in the car park two minutes before the parade, then stood in the sun filming a Year 1 kid who could not stop waving.

Librarians seed the idea. Parents are the real McCoys.

Our mission at FSI is to empower education by championing the people who shape it. This week, that was teachers, librarians, and every single one of you at home with a glue gun and a plan.

Book Week is a symphony of stories. The library sets the tune. You're the ones who show up and play it. 💛

Thank you. Happy last day of Book Week.

🎁 The Sunday ACARA-Sync DropAC9E4LE03 — Year 4 English, Literature."Discuss how authors and illustrators make stories en...
23/08/2026

🎁 The Sunday ACARA-Sync Drop

AC9E4LE03 — Year 4 English, Literature.

"Discuss how authors and illustrators make stories engaging by the way they develop character, setting and plot tensions."

This one is the pivot. Year 3 asked how a setting makes you feel. Year 4 asks how the author built the thing that made you feel it.

And there's a series sitting on your shelf right now that teaches it better than almost anything.

Deltora Quest. Emily Rodda.

Eight books. One quest. A new gem, a new guardian, a new impossible problem in every single volume. Plot tension isn't a technique in Deltora Quest. It's the whole architecture.

Ask a Year 4 why they couldn't put it down and they will tell you, unprompted, exactly what Rodda did to them.

That's AC9E4LE03. Done.

Every copy in your catalogue, already mapped. Every code, already attached. You didn't have to do a thing.

That's ACARA-Sync. That's the FSI Difference.

https://zurl.co/xibUW

📚 Emily Rodda. Also known as Jennifer Rowe.Six CBCA Book of the Year Awards for Younger Readers, a record no one has mat...
22/08/2026

📚 Emily Rodda. Also known as Jennifer Rowe.

Six CBCA Book of the Year Awards for Younger Readers, a record no one has matched. (Jennifer Rowe, Wikipedia)

Something Special. 1985.
Pigs Might Fly. 1987.
The Best-Kept Secret. 1989.
Finders Keepers. 1991.
Rowan of Rin. 1994.
His Name Was Walter. 2019.

Thirty-four years between her first win and her sixth.

And under her own name, Jennifer Rowe writes crime fiction for adults.

One of the quiet giants of Australian children's literature. And every teacher-librarian in the country has put a Deltora Quest in a kid's hands.

Happy Saturday from FSI. 💛

Address

St Kilda, VIC
3004

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Functional Solutions International PTY LTD posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category