New media literacy lessons aim to tackle crushing civics results
Australia's governor-general is on a mission to reverse declining civics scores among Australian students.
She's driven by two factors: young people's poor understanding of how democracy works, and their lack of faith in our institutions — both at record lows.
"I think misinformation and disinformation is the great scourge of our time," Her Excellency, the Honourable Sam Mostyn, said.
But even for a trailblazing business leader with a lifetime of achievement, the task of improving young people's ability to engage in democracy is enormous — and the stakes even higher.
"It's one of the things that can weaken us as a country. We don't want to have a generation coming through that don't understand how to access our civics, how to be participants as citizens," Ms Mostyn said.
She plans to be a "visible" governor-general, and throwing her weight behind moves to improve civics knowledge will be a key part of that.
One such move she's backed is a push to include more civics in the national curriculum.
The ABC can reveal a new teaching model will be rolled out across Australian schools to counter poor results in recent civic exams and fight back against misinformation and disinformation.
It will be woven into different subject areas and is part of Australia's first media literacy strategy announced in December. The move will complement other initiatives by the government, schools and other groups around the country.
If the mission to improve civics understanding fails, the consequences will be felt not just by students leaving school but by the entire nation, according to Ms Mostyn.
"I think there is [a lot at stake] if we are to be a truly great nation," Ms Mostyn said.
For her, Australia's civic institutions and democratic history are the glue that unites Indigenous heritage, British colonialism and millions of new migrants.
"A three-part braided story of our country: 65,000 years of attachment to this continent, with the longest ever continuous culture … the arrival of the British with these institutions that we still cherish. And then the last 50, 60 years of over 8 million now-Australian citizens coming from somewhere else," she said.
Stirring words to inspire, but it's a story too few young Australians know about.
Test scores released by ACARA (Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority) this year showed that just 28 per cent of Year 10 students and 43 per cent of Year 6 students are proficient in civics.
It's the worst result in 20 years of testing.
"What we've seen is that trend continuing, but it has had a more steep decline," ACARA CEO Stephen Gniel, said.
He said with fewer than one in three Year 10 students being proficient in civics, it's something "we need to take really seriously".
One school taking it very seriously is Ambarvale High School.
On the fringes of south-west Sydney, it lies in a fast-growing region where paddocks are quickly turning into housing development.
It's the kind of place politicians love to visit at election time.
Last year ACARA listed the school as one of its top-performing despite 87 per cent of students being ranked in the bottom half of educational disadvantage.
The school is punching above its weight with civics studies by finding new ways to engage students in a subject kids can find dull.
"A focus in my team is on getting kids involved in real-world examples. We've taken our kids to Parliament House, we've taken our kids to have a Q&A forum with the local member of Campbelltown, Greg Warren," head teacher Jo Novak said.
"When we hold our general elections for senior leaders, we set up our voting booths and we have the kids do paper votes and cast it into a ballot box."
But there's more to the problem than exposure to the mechanics of democracy.
The ABC recently held a community engagement event at the school and the message from students was clear: adults are a big part of the problem.
As non-voting observers of the recent federal election, these 15 to 17-year-olds were put off by the negativity on display and attempts to engage them on social media.
"I thought anything on Instagram was insulting to younger generations," Alex said, speaking about the parties' social media campaigning.
Her friends, who will all be voting at the next election, agreed.
"A lot of the stuff online like TikTok, Instagram, was jokes and memes. Nothing really serious," Lili said.
As well as better communication, they wanted to see meaningful policies for young people and were eager to be involved in civic life.
"They do really question whether the political parties are taking their views on board," Ms Novak said.
A recent senate inquiry into civics education and political participation found arming young people with the skills to weed out misinformation was critical.
"Whether it's a news story, a television show, an online video or a social media post, our young people need to learn how to sort fact from fiction, and work out whether something is credible or not," Mr Gniel said.
Brisbane State High School was an early adopter of explicit teaching of media literacy, designed to guide students through identifying misinformation and biases in traditional and new media.
"Building the skills within a student to look at something and go, 'Can I trust that? Or what question should I ask first? Or who made that? And what vested interests do they have in it?'," teacher Aimee Gust said.
Similar lessons will now be rolled out nationwide with ACARA unveiling a new teaching resource tomorrow called curriculum connections: media consumers and creators.
The new national curriculum lessons will be available to teachers from kindergarten all the way though to Year 10.
The key skills it will aim to equip students with include understanding and analysing contemporary media and creating media content.
It also aims to empower students to be critical of media bias, understand misinformation and how to be ethical in sharing material online.
Some experts though, like Trisha Jha from the Centre for Independent Studies, believe there is a case for broader reform of civics education.
And ACARA's chief said changes in schools needed to be accompanied by work at home too, suggesting families chat about civics education and Australian democracy.
"It's really important. We've just been through a great opportunity for those conversations, haven't we, with a federal election?" Mr Gneil said.
It's a big task but the governor-general hopes to use high office to push for high-stakes change and is buoyed by the efforts of others.
"I'm hugely optimistic. We have huge opportunity to strengthen our democracy," she said.
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News.com.au
19 minutes ago
- News.com.au
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ABC News
25 minutes ago
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All universities in Gaza have been destroyed. What does this mean for Palestinians?
The Islamic University of Gaza was once a buzzing campus, filled with ambitious students studying everything from medicine to literature. Now, displaced families huddle in its ruined classrooms, burning school books for kindling. Israeli bombardment during the Israel-Gaza war destroyed its main auditorium; its rows of seats are now charred and crumpled. Tents are pitched next to piles of rubble, in buildings that once housed esteemed scholars. Among their alumni are award-winning poets, journalists, professors and — far more controversially — Hamas leaders. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the last remaining university in the Gaza region was destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 2024. Wesam Amer is the dean of the faculty of communication and languages at another institution, Gaza University, and began his tenure there in 2020. "We already have a generation lost in Gaza; a generation of students, a generation of academics," he tells ABC Radio National's Late Night Live. He says the initial ground invasion in Gaza prevented students from attending campuses at the beginning of the war. All levels of in-person teaching stopped in early November, 2023. Dr Amer says he suspects Israel wants to eliminate the ability of Palestinian people to gain an education, "because education in Palestine, and for Palestinians, is existence". "And existence is resistance as well," he says. Dr Amer was forced to flee Gaza shortly after the war began and has been teaching online from the UK since May 2024. On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants undertook a surprise attack in southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers, and taking around 240 hostage. Israel's response has been an extensive bombing campaign and a ground invasion of Gaza which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says aims to "eliminate" Hamas. Gaza's health ministry says more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed. Even before the current war, universities were functioning under extreme conditions, says Mona Jebril, a Palestinian academic and research associate at the Centre for Business Research at Cambridge University. Dr Jebril taught at University of Palestine and later Al-Azhar University between 2006 and 2012. Like any professor, her days were spent preparing lessons, marking assignments and ensuring her students showed up on time. However, Dr Jebril says she frequently experienced power outages in Gaza lasting between six to 12 hours. They would happen so suddenly that she began to change her sleep schedule so she could prepare her lessons during times when the electricity came back on. "And then I go to the university, and there is no electricity, so in the end I [couldn't] use it." Her students also faced limitations from these power outages and would often question the relevance of subjects like philosophy to their reality. "I remember one student once asked me, 'What is the relevance of Plato to Gaza? How would learning Plato improve our lives here?'," she says. Many were more concerned with finding jobs than doing school work. Data from the Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Studies shows youth unemployment is at 70 per cent in Gaza. "Many know that they won't actually get a job because they have seen other graduates who are not able to find employment," says Dr Jebril. Dr Jebril left Gaza in 2012 to study a PhD at Cambridge University in the UK and has not been able to return home. She doesn't know which of her relatives, colleagues and students are still alive after the war. "I constantly think about them … I don't know who's still alive or who actually has been killed," she says. For many academics in the region, choosing to leave is a difficult decision. Dr Amer says he was ultimately forced to leave Gaza because of the war. "It was not … like a personal decision," he says. He attempted to leave Gaza four times before he finally made it out. Dr Amer studied in Germany so he reached out to the German embassy, which agreed to help he and his family leave. In November 2023, Dr Amer had to transport his wife, who was in her last month of pregnancy, and his two daughters to the Rafah crossing. "We were the only people on the street, actually, and driving from Khan Yunis to Rafah, you can imagine the risks and the dangers we went through until we reached the Rafah crossing," he says. Now Dr Amer is working as a visiting researcher at Cambridge University, and living with his family in the UK. In a press release last year, UN experts expressed grave concern over the attacks on educational facilities in the Gaza Strip, including universities. The IDF claims campuses, such as the Islamic University of Gaza, are used by Hamas. "The [Islamic University of Gaza] was being used as a Hamas training camp for military intelligence operatives, as well as for the development and production of weapons," an IDF statement from October 2023 says. Images of various weapons, explosives and other technological devices were also released by the IDF, which they claim were found at Al-Azhar University. However, there has also been some criticism from within Israel of the attacks on Gaza, including their educational system. In May 2025, more than 1000 academics released an open letter addressed to the leading Israeli academic institutions calling for an end to the conflict. The letter criticises the "complete elimination of the educational system" in Gaza and highlights the role of higher education and academics in the war. Based on their experience at the universities past and present, Dr Amer and Dr Jebril reject claims Hamas is affiliated with the insitutions. "But this [Hamas affiliation] is not true because I've been working in Gaza since 2020, and I've been teaching, mainly at Gaza University and also at other universities. We have much independence in our universities," Dr Amer says. He adds that focusing on quality research and educating students is the objective of these universities. He believes the attacks are an attempt by Israel to suppress the intellectual expression of the Palestinian community and impede their recovery after the war. "Israel tries its best to undermine Palestinian identity … [and prevents] restoring essential political and socio-economic conditions, because education is seen as a source of economic stability for many Palestinian families," he says. The destruction of these universities also has significant implications for the preservation and transmission of Palestinian culture, Dr Jebril says. She says that before the founding of the Islamic University of Gaza in 1978, Palestinians would have to go to neighbouring countries to study, where they would not learn about their cultural history. She says the history of the Palestinian struggle for education is represented in the building of the universities. "There is a history linked to the resistance of Palestinians that is connected to these spaces," Dr Jebril says. "So destroying the university … is actually a destruction of the memory of the resistance of the past." Despite the conflict, Dr Amer continues to teach and mentor his students, with many in Gaza depending on solar panels to power the few electronics they have at their disposal. Three of the largest public universities in Gaza, Al-Aqsa University, Al-Azhar University and the Islamic University of Gaza, have formed an 'Emergency Committee' to ensure teaching continues and those in the region stay connected with the international academic community. "Academics and students [are] really clinging to these opportunities to feel alive, to convey their voice, to represent their community, but also to keep their hopes," Dr Jebril says. Methods of support include offering students virtual opportunities to continue learning. Oxford University has granted students from Gaza and the West Bank access to the Bodleian Libraries. "Which is really important because … all libraries and other resources are destroyed," Dr Jebril says. Despite the destruction, Dr Amer hopes universities in Gaza will be able to rebuild. "To move forward, we need coordinated efforts to rehabilitate infrastructure, provide mobile learning units, create digital academic libraries, and strengthen international academic solidarity," he says. However, Dr Amer says supporting education in Gaza goes beyond restoring buildings and providing reading materials — it relies on the resilience of students in the face of significant psychological trauma.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
The US dollar's demise has consequences for Australia
"I'll tell you, he's not the first," Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. The US president was referring to Elon Musk's personal attacks towards himself on social media after being asked to leave his administration. "People leave my administration — and they love us — and then, at some point, they miss it so badly, and some of them embrace it, and some actually become hostile." This sort of language could be perceived as unpresidential. As is the phrasing of Trump's so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" — the name given to Trump's budget reconciliation bill that's expected to lead to both a lower tax take, and an increase in the US debt ceiling. It was perhaps, though, the so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs that did the most damage to the Trump administration's reputation within the finance community. Combined, it's led the financial community to question the stewardship of the US economy. And that has important implications for all Australians. It's impossible to dig into every confusing hole of US public policy that's produced anxiety in financial markets. Instead, let's focus on one word that's continuing to unsettle global investors which, in turn, could be hurting the reputation of the world's largest economy. It's "uncertainty". As one trader put it to me this week: "It's like investors are parked on the side of the road waiting patiently, in the cold, for the fog to lift from the highway." AMP's Shane Oliver helps manage billions of dollars for the superannuation giant. "President Trump's tariffs remain a source of ongoing uncertainty," he says. Just in the last two weeks, Trump announced a 25 per cent tariff on smart phones and threatened a 50 per cent tariff on European goods from June, then delayed it until July 9. And this is where concerns around the US dollar's longer-term trajectory come in. The US dollar is inextricably linked to the quality of the US government debt. Oliver is concerned the US government is careening toward a debt crisis. "Higher bond yields since the pandemic have pushed US federal interest payments to a record 18 per cent of tax revenue," he says. Higher US government bond yields, or debt, points to rising nerves about the US government's fiscal position. The US dollar index, which is a measure of the US dollar's value against a basket of currencies, hit a three-year low this week If, as Oliver suggests, the US dollar is losing its post-World War II safe haven status, it will continue to decline in value. "It's possible that the US dollar is losing its 'safe haven' status that could see it fall rather than go up in a crisis." Oliver is referring here to the potential for a US debt crisis. "This means the Australian dollar may behave a bit less as a shock absorber in a crisis by not falling as much as would normally be the case," he says. "Time will tell, but if this is the case then more of the burden could fall on the RBA to help protect the economy in rough times by cutting interest rates by more." This is potentially a double win for many Australians. It could make overseas travel less expensive as the Australian dollar appreciates against the greenback. There could also be further relief for mortgage borrowers as the Reserve Bank lowers interest rates to counterbalance rising global interest rates. But it would be a blow for export-exposed industries, who are hit with a potential double-whammy of falling global demand and a less competitive exchange rate. Others view the US economy, and its international reputation as largely untouchable. "I cannot see a world where the US dollar is not the reserve currency of global flows," Jamieson Coote Bond's James Wilson says. However, as InTouch Capital Markets senior analyst Sean Callow points out, other currencies like the yuan and the euro are keen to move towards the top of the currency podium. "The greenback seems likely to remain dominant in global trade in commodities and many financial contracts, where deep market liquidity is precious," Callow says. "But just as the US relationship with Europe will probably never be the same, the euro is becoming more attractive as a reserve currency, largely at the dollar's expense." It's a rocky road for global financial markets and most are treading very carefully. The uncertainty stems from US economic policy confusion and chaos, which may not go unpunished by investors. Though there is potential for significant upsides for many Australians.
