Is there a crisis in nursing retention in New South Wales?

Background: There is a severe shortage of nurses in Australia. Policy makers and researchers are especially concerned that retention levels of nurses in the health workforce have worsened over the last decade. There are also concerns that rapidly growing private sector hospitals are attracting qualified nurses away from the public sector. To date no systematic analysis of trends in nursing retention rates over time has been conducted due to the lack of consistent panel data. Results: A 1.4 percentage point improvement in retention has led to a 10% increase in the overall supply of nurses in NSW. There has also been a substantial aging of the workforce, due to greater retention and an increase in mature age entrants. The improvement in retention is found in all types of premises and is largest in nursing homes. There is a substantial amount of year to year movement in and out of the workforce and across premises. The shortage of nurses in public hospitals is due to a slowdown in entry rather than competition from the rapidly growing private sector hospitals. Policy Implications: The finding of an improvement (rather than a worsening) in retention suggests that additional improvements may be difficult to achieve as further retention must involve individuals more and more dissatisfied with nursing relative to other opportunities. Hence policies targeting entry such as increased places in nursing programs and additional subsidies for training costs may be more effective in dealing with the workforce shortage. This is also the case for shortages in public sector hospitals as retention in nursing is found to be relatively high in this sector. However, the large amount of year to year movements across nursing jobs, especially among the younger nurses, also suggests that policies aimed at reducing job switches and increasing the number who return to nursing should also be pursued. More research is needed in understanding the relative importance of detailed working conditions and the problems associated with combining family responsibilities and nursing jobs. © 2008 Doiron et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Education for citizenship in South Australian public schools: a pilot study of senior leader and teacher perceptions

Preparing students for informed and active citizenship is a core goal of education and schooling in Australia. The ways schools educate and prepare young Australians for citizenship involves a range of processes and initiatives central to the work of schools, including school ethos, mission, extra-curricular activities and community-based participation. With regard to the formal curriculum, the recent introduction and implementation of the first ever Federal Australian curriculum includes provision for a new subject – Civics and Citizenship. Research evidence from other nations suggests that schools understand, approach and enact education for citizenship in a multitude of ways, yet how Australian schools construct this aspect of their work is currently under-researched. In this context, and drawing on data from interviews with school leaders and teachers of year six-eight (11-14 year olds) students in a small sample of South Australian primary and secondary schools, we explore perceptions and current approaches to education for citizenship. Our findings suggest (i) that while school leaders and teachers value education for citizenship, they do so for different reasons; (ii) that schools place values as central to education for citizenship; and, (iii) that community involvement is typically understood as occurring within rather than beyond the school

Improving the professional knowledge base for education: Using knowledge management (KM) and Web 2.0 tools

Improving education systems is an elusive goal. Despite considerable investment, international studies such as the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) project and the McKinsey Report How the world’s best performing schools come out on top indicate that improving teacher quality is more important than increased financial investment. Both reports challenge governments, academics and practitioners to adopt new ways of sharing and building knowledge. This paper makes the case for national education systems to adopt tried and tested knowledge management and web 2.0 tools used by other sectors and highlights the neglected potential of teacher educators as agents for improvement

Different battlegrounds, similar concerns? The “history wars” and the teaching of history in Australia and England

Debates about the purpose and content of history education in schools have been prevalent in most Westernised democratic nations over the last thirty years. At expense are essential questions concerning national identity/ies, competing narratives and the aims of history education. The impact of “history wars” have been felt within both Australia and England, as conservative commentators – including politicians and historians – have raised concerns about the depth and effectiveness of history education and have sought to make significant changes to the history curriculum for schools. This analysis examines the history wars in Australia and England, exploring the view that history education has been in danger and/or crisis and examining the curricular implications of a move toward greater recognition of national narratives. It raises some essential tensions that remain regarding two aspects of history teaching in both nations – (i) historiography and (ii) chronological understanding

Skill Mismatch and Training in Australia: Some Implications for Policy

The link between skill acquisition and earnings is one of the cornerstones of labour economics. The conventional view is that, all else being equal, workers with relatively higher stocks of embedded skills will receive a relatively higher return when supplying labour. The link between skills and labour market returns means that the extent of skill acquisition, and the means by which those skills are acquired, may have important implications for labour market outcomes. Indeed, the fact that education and more broadly human capital are associated with higher earnings is a familiar research result. However, recent research has emphasised the idea that the distribution of skill acquisition across the pool of available workers may not be perfectly aligned with the distribution of tasks or technologies across the economy; this research has given prominence to the concept of job-skill mismatch. The basic problem is that workers may be either overskilled or under-skilled for the labour market tasks they are called upon to perform