Vow to end âugly lotteryâ with $1.6b school disability reform
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Education Minister James Merlino has pledged to tackle âschool gatekeepingâ â where students with disabilities are steered away from a particular school â describing it as an âugly lotteryâ for parents.
Mr Merlino said the Victorian governmentâs $1.6 billion change to student disability funding â which was announced in the 2020 state budget and will be rolled out in 340 schools this year â would ensure every school was âtruly inclusiveâ for students with disabilities.
James Merlino announcing the $1.6 billion reform at Keelonith Primary School in Greenvale last November.
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Support for Australia becoming a republic has slipped, according to a poll that reveals only a third of Australians are in favour.
The online Ipsos poll, conducted for the
The Age,
The Sydney Morning Herald and Nine News, surveyed 1222 people nationally and found 40 per cent were opposed to a republic, under which Australiaâs own head of state would replace the British monarchy.
Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh at Windsor Castle in November. A new poll has found support for the idea of Australia becoming a republic has slipped.
Credit:Getty Images
One quarter said they didnât know, which is the highest level of undecided responses on the issue recorded by successive Ipsos and Nielsen polls.
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In a different world, I would have filed this piece from the Jakarta bureau on a grey December afternoon, the sky pregnant with the promise of wet-season rain.
Finished, I d have hopped on a Go-Jek motorcycle taxi, headed down the road to Por Que No in central Menteng and, from the fifth-floor rooftop bar, looked out one last time at Barack Obama s old school, at the McMansions, the street carts and the slums that sit side-by-side in the sinking, polluted concrete mess that is Jakarta.
Karen Barlow and James Massola with children Sabina and twins Carlo and Giacomo on their way to Jakarta.