Guest Speaker Julie Wright gave a polished and informative talk detailing the work of the Albury Wodonga Health, Parents and Baby Service. She acknowledged the work done over the last 30 years by the Mercy Hospital and their change to away from Parent and Baby care to their key business of Aged and Palliative care. She went on to give statistics for the AWH Maternity Service.: 1723 births for 2012/2013, 470 admissions to Special Care Nursery, 140 staff, Catchment area of 7 local government areas in NSW & Victoria and the Ronald McDonald accommodation. She talked about Vulnerable families and the support they offer. Also the Parents and Baby Support Service and how it operates. Then she gave projected plans for the service after which Julie answered numerous questions. Greg Pearl also gave a short talk about the AWH commitment to build an appropriate facility on designated land apposite the Maternity Unit.

Guest Speaker Paul Grover- Lecturer in Education – CSU.

We have recently heard many Australian media commentators and politicians applaud the Finnish education system because of their results on international tests in literacy, numeracy and science – and then go on to say we should adopt certain selected parts of their system to ‘fix’ our own – but they are always selective about which parts according to their own agendas  (why ‘fix’? –  because the underlying assumption is that if we are not winning the international testing race then we must be failing). Last year we welcomed at CSU Albury-Wodonga Finnish research fellow  Dr Tuija Turunen from the University of Lapland – she trains teachers for the Finnish education system.

Key points she noted about the Finnish education system:

• very high status profession (but not higher pay scale)
•  rigorous teacher education selection – highly selective from top performers (in 2012 – 8000 applicants competed for 670 places in teacher education)
• selection is based on an entrance exam, then group discussions and then personal interviews – group discussions look at personality traits and aptitude for teaching – each applicant leads a discussion based on an educational topic…looking for leadership qualities, genuine teaching potential, not dominating types or shy or those who are ‘acting’ a role, want good listeners, contributors, team players
• basic qualification required is a Master’s degree for primary & secondary teaching
• each university offering teaching courses has a school attached to it with high-quality specially selected staff as mentors – very high level of in-school training
• very, very few private schools – virtually all students attend public schools
• no major exams throughout school career for students – only at end of school for university entrance  – not a spirit of competition, but collaboration/support among students, no streamed classes based on Maths or English or Science skills – but parallel classes with all students having equal access and opportunity, accept diversity and be able to work with all people.
• least number of class hours per student in developed world & high level of teacher support for students
• school decides its own curriculum – not the government or the education department. The school is given a curriculum framework and develops the subject curriculum for their own students in their own community – teachers are highly trained to research their own students and their education needs.
• Finland does not see education as a competition with other countries – just what works for Finland…and not much attention was given in the media to these PISA results.