I remember how it was -- JR
Florida School Punished for Allowing Boy in Girls’ Sports
A Florida high school has been fined and placed on administrative probation for violating the state’s bylaws by allowing a biologically male student to participate on a female sports team, The Daily Signal has learned.
The move appears to be the first time that a public school has been punished for violating state laws protecting fairness in women’s sports.
“Thanks to the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida passed legislation to protect girls’ sports and we will not tolerate any school that violates this law,” Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said in a statement to The Daily Signal. “We applaud the swift action taken by the Florida High School Athletic Association to ensure there are serious consequences for this illegal behavior.”
In a letter sent Tuesday morning, the Florida High School Athletic Association informed Monarch High School and its principal, Moira Sweeting-Miller, that the high school “permitted a biological male to participate on the girls volleyball team during the 2022-2023 and 2023-24 Girls Volleyball seasons,” thereby violating FHSA Bylaw 8.6.2 and Florida Statute 1006.205(3)(c).
Florida’s bylaw 8.62 states that “biological males may not participate on a female team in any sport,” the letter reminds Monarch High School. Policy 16.11.6 states that the “use of an ineligible student when self-reported, may subject the school to a monetary penalty of a minimum of $100 per contest and/or other sanctions.”
F.S. 1006.205(3)(c) states that “athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls may not be open to students of the male sex.”
That male student played in over 30 games, according to the letter, and the athletic association has not “received any corrective actions from Monarch High School.”
As punishment, the association officially reprimands Monarch High School with a letter that becomes “a permanent part of the school’s membership record.”
The association also places the school on “Administrative Probation” through Nov. 20, 2024. In this one letter, the school has been reprimanded, fined, and served notice that it is in a “period of warning for a minimum calendar year.”
The letter additionally states that Monarch High School owes a monetary penalty of $16,500 ($500 per contest, in accordance with Policy 16.11.6), and Monarch High School representatives will be required to attend one of the association’s Compliance Seminars in both 2024 and 2025. The high school will also be required to host association staff for an “eligibility and Compliance Workshop” no later than June 30, 2024.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/12/exclusive-florida-school-punished-allowing-boy-girls-sports/
*****************************************************New Zealand To Axe Gender Ideology From National Curriculum In Schools
New Zealand’s tri-party coalition government has agreed to overhaul the existing gender, sexuality, and relationship guidelines in schools, aiming to shift the focus towards academic achievement rather than ideology.
This decision will include the removal and replacement of the relationships and sexuality-based guidelines.
This agreement has gained a mix of support and criticism from various sectors, including parents, educators, members of the LGBTQ community, and advocacy groups.
Support for the decision comes from Resist Gender Education (RGE), a group advocating for factual and age-appropriate education.
RGE argues that the current Relationships and Sexuality Education Guide (RSE Guide) is scientifically inaccurate, promotes an ideology not held by a majority of parents and caregivers, and is not age-appropriate in places.
There is also concern that certain concepts being taught, such as the spectrum of sex and the fluidity of gender identity, are more ideological than factual and potentially confusing for young students, and can promote body dissociation in young children.
With topics like 'gender identity' being introduced to children as young as five, RGE also believes it is too early for such complex discussions.
RGE stated that schools are currently teaching children that sexist stereotypes are what determine their sex.
"As a consequence, would-be lesbian and gay children are learning that if they don’t conform to feminine or masculine stereotypes, their bodies ought to be medically altered,” RGE said in a media release, on Nov. 25.
Instead, RGE sees the need for education about consent and healthy relationships, but as a non-biased approach to the content of Relationship and Sexuality Education lessons.
“We are a non-partisan and non-religious group who advocate for the right of children to be their authentic selves without discrimination, labelling, or medical intervention to 'fix' them,” RGE said.
The Pushback
Critical of this removal and rewrite proposal, Education Professor Katie Fitzpatrick from the University of Auckland has been public in her warning that removing these guidelines could result in regressive schooling.
Ms. Fitzpatrick, a lead writer in the 2015 documents for sexuality education, argues that omitting these topics could be seen as withholding essential knowledge and education from young people.
New Zealand's largest Education Union, the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI), echoed the sentiment, urging the government to consider teachers’ and parents' views before implementing any radical educational policies.
"My initial reaction was dismay," said NZEI's president Mark Potter, a Wellington-based primary school teacher.
"The one thing our children don't need is less education in the area of relationships and health."
The recent results of the Programme For International Student Assessment (PISA) which assesses the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students and insights into educational systems, showed contributing background factors such as rising rates of food insecurity and anxiety among students.
NZEI wants to see the government write policies that support student well-being and a sense of belonging, rather than cherry-picking parts of the curriculum for political agendas.
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Australian universities set to lose millions of dollars in international student crackdown
Universities and private colleges considered at high risk of recruiting international students to Australia to work rather than study stand to lose tens of millions of dollars in revenue under the government’s new migration strategy.
Victoria University and Federation University in Victoria and Wollongong and Newcastle universities in NSW are among those whose ability to easily recruit international students is in jeopardy, according to confidential independent ratings seen by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Meanwhile, the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia, which represents hundreds of private colleges, described the new migration strategy as “reckless” and said Australia’s broken visa processing system was to blame – not students.
“There is a real risk that it will diminish Australia’s reputation as a high-quality [educator of] international students,” ITECA chief executive Troy Williams said on Tuesday.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles on Monday released the federal government’s migration strategy, which plans to halve immigration numbers within two years. Australia’s net migration reached a high of 510,000 in the year to June 2023.
The strategy is designed to weed out people using the student visa system as a back door to the job market, aiming to cut new arrivals by targeting universities and colleges considered the highest risk of accepting students coming to Australia to work rather than study.
A new process to be introduced before the end of the year by the Department of Home Affairs will result in swift processing of student visa applications only for low-risk providers.
A spokesman for O’Neil said it had been put in place to protect the integrity and quality of Australia’s international education sector. “If providers are doing the wrong thing, they will face slower processing times,” he said.
The strategy will leave Australia’s most established and richest universities such as the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney largely untouched, while other universities and private colleges with a track record of recruiting non-genuine students will be targeted.
“Higher risk providers will experience slower processing times as visa decision makers consider the integrity of a provider, as well as individual student applicants,” the strategy said.
A table of university risk ratings produced by a firm working in international education based on confidential Home Affairs data – seen by this masthead – placed Victoria’s Federation University as the riskiest university for students entering Australia to work rather than study.
Universities with the best record are ranked tier one. Federation University was the only institution rated at the worst level, tier three.
A Federation University spokeswoman said it had been “disproportionately impacted by a sharp increase in visa refusals from India by the Department of Home Affairs earlier this year, which has now been addressed”.
“We are confident that following ongoing consultation with the Department of Home Affairs that we will return to a tier two rating for 2024,” she said.
Private colleges with higher risk ratings will also have their student numbers cut by the strategy.
ITECA said in a statement that the new migration strategy was “highly problematic, based on broad and often inaccurate generalisations about quality [in private colleges], and data from a broken visa processing system”.
“The language in the migration strategy is reckless,” Williams said. He warned of a potential “massive overcorrection” that would hurt the entire international skills training sector.
Visa grant rates had already begun to fall in recent months amid controversy over visa rorting, students moving to lower-cost courses, ghost colleges that act as shopfronts for so-called students to access the jobs market, corrupt agents and the exploitation of students.
Among the measures to be put in place to reduce student numbers are a tougher English language test and a new “genuine student test” – although it is unclear how this will differ from the existing “genuine temporary entrant” statement that prospective students must complete now.
The strategy also stops international students who enrol at an Australian university from dropping out of that course after six months and switching to a cheaper vocational college.
And it winds back the post-study work rights available to tens of thousands of students, with temporary student visas available at present for stays of up to eight years.
Students who are working in Australia on a “temporary graduate visa” will also be blocked from staying in the country for years more by enrolling in a new course once their graduate visa ends.
Not everyone in the sector believes the new strategy will slash international student numbers.
Associate Professor Peter Hurley, a director of the Mitchell Institute policy research group within Victoria University, said it was unlikely the new migration strategy would drastically change things.
“There are 860,000 international students and their families now in the country,” he said. “The students I think the government is targeting in this migration strategy are those in private colleges, along with those who have finished their course [and who have post-study work rights].”
Hurley said the migration strategy would simply cut back the growth of student numbers, rather than actively reducing them.
“This is the story of international migration policy over the past two decades: we have a big boom, we change the settings so numbers fall a little, and then the increase starts again,” he said.
Hurley said that England and Canada were also reining in their growth in post-study work rights because “post-pandemic, student numbers just exploded in those countries as well”.
He said Australia’s growth in international students, though, had been remarkable since the emergency phase of the pandemic had ended. “In two years, we have added about 450,000 people to the population – about the same population as Canberra – as international students returned to Australia.”
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