3 September: Get your orders in early for the book Your Child's First Year At School: A Book for Parents. It is a great way to welcome your first year children to your school, and it's a great resource for parents. For more information, click on the links near the top and bottom of this page or on the book cover to the left. Over 25,000 copies were bought in the last year.

2 September: APPA has submitted a response to the draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Geography produced by ACARA as part of the Australian Curriculum. ACARA will now produce the next version of their paper, which will be sued to write the K-12 Geography curriculum. Click here to download and read APPA's response to the draft paper.

25 August: The Global Children's Challenge^™ is a health initiative designed to get children from all over the world active and instill in them the habit and importance of daily exercise for the rest of their lives. Please consider participating in this initiative, which could have a great effect on the lives of the young people in your school. Click here or on the News item to the right for more information.

16 August: APPA has issued a media release welcoming release of the the Coalition's Education Policy. But Leonie Trimper, APPA President went on to say: "However, further detail will be needed before a final judgment on the Coalition’s policy can be made." Click here to read and download the complete media release.

11 August: APPA has received the responses from the three major political parties to the questionnaire that we sent to them on 22 July. The questions focused on the 4 school priority areas identified by APPA's National Executive. Click here to go to the page where you can read the responses.We have issued a special edition of the APPA Newsletter that contains all the responses sent by the parties - click on the Newsletters item on the menu above to go to that website page.

10 August: We have issued a media release giving qualified support to the latest reforms announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, though we have expressed concerns about the system of reward payments to schools that were proposed. We support an online assessment tool and a Learning Bank, as well as a national system of bonus payments that recognise teachers who make an outstanding contribution to their school. Click here to read the complete media release.

9 August: The BER Implementation Taskforce's Interim Report has been delivered to the Australian Government's Minister for Education, Simon Crean. The final report is due in November of this year. Click here to go to the page on the Australian Government's website where you can download the report in PDF format. The report contains an Executive Summary, a series of recommendations, as well as over 90 pages of information.

2 August: APPA welcomes Gillard Labor’s Empowering Local Schools announcement that will give principals and local school communities greater responsibility over school budgets, the selection and employment of teachers and staff and identifying future funding priorities. Click here to read the complete APPA media release and the PM's documents.

30 July: APPA's meeting with Professor Peter Tannock and Professor Carmel Lawrence, members of the Australian Government's School Funding Model Review Panel, went very well. They are keen to read our research documents and are now intending to meet with Professor Max Angus to discuss our research more fully. Click here to read more about the meeting.

13 July: APPA has made a submission to the Senate Inquiry into the administration and reporting of NAPLAN testing. Click here to download the submission. 

10 June: We have released a paper entitled The Overarching Principles Governing the Reporting and Use of NAPLAN, with a media release, in which we put forward 6 principles and recommendations to be considered by all governments, because it is important that schools are protected from any negative consequences. Click here to read the media release and download the paper. We urge all APPA members to read the paper and discuss it with your school staff and community.  

18 March: APPA has released a new paper: Designing a Funding Model for Australian Primary Schools. It provides the basis for the design of a new model for school funding. APPA’s proposed model represents an historic breakthrough, which recognises that all Australian schools are entitled to government funding according to the needs of their students, irrespective of school sector. Click here to read and download the paper and the accompanying media release. In launching the paper, Leonie Trimper said: "For the first time, all three education sectors have come together in support of a funding model that operates transparently and on the basis of need."