It was great to see so many of you at the State/Territory Branch meetings last week. Thanks to everyone that attended the meetings and provided comments on the current environment. We’ve been working hard to support you with our advocacy, market intelligence, and professional development activities. Your input provides the direction for the future work of the association.
Hearing directly from member colleges is critical for a member-based organisation as it ensures that we are delivering the right message to government about what can best help our industry. I welcome any chance to speak with you and want to assure you that I am always available for a chat if you have any concerns.
Advocating for member support
The challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to force us to look for new ways to support our members. As we move closer to September and the scheduled end of the JobKeeper program, English Australia is leaving no stone unturned in pursuing an extension of this program for another six months.
In conversations with members, we believe JobKeeper’s extension will benefit the sector the most . I wrote to the federal Department of Treasury again this week, outlining our case for JobKeeper’s extension and spoke with key ministers’ offices on this issue. I will continue to push for this extension in the forums that English Australia regularly participates in and at any other opportunities that arise. However, English Australia will still advocate for other key items such as waiving visa fees and access to pilot border reopening programs.
Sector performance and market intelligence
This month saw April’s data clearly show the impact of Covid-19 on our sector with a 17% decrease in commencements. Seeing data like this and understanding just how significantly we have been affected by the border closures, reminds me of the importance of having accurate and timely data.
Thank you to all our members that participated in the Annual ELICOS Market survey 2019 and the new Quarterly ELICOS Market survey 2020. Contributing your data to these surveys will provide the best possible view on our sector’s performance and greatly help our advocacy efforts on your behalf.
We have our webinar series on our Annual Market survey and the Quarterly survey kicking off this Thursday. Members and survey participants can register for any of these webinars. I encourage you to join these unique opportunities to ensure you have the latest market data.
While registrations for our new Quarterly Market insight survey have closed, you can still register for the second quarter, which will collect Q2 data from this Wednesday.
Evolving professional development program
We continue to evolve our professional development program to meet the needs of our members. This past month we supported our Action Research participants to continue their programs via virtual platforms. I would like to thank Cambridge English Assessment for their on-going support of this program.
I’m also excited to see the program for our first EdTech symposium that will be held 22-23 July 2020. With over 500 people actively engaged in our Special Interest Group, I’m sure this will be a tremendously insightful program. Please encourage your staff to register.
We will soon launch our call for abstracts for our 2020 English Australia Conference, being held online 14-18 September 2020. Please mark your calendars in advance.
Border reopening plans
In our recently held branch forums, I provided an update on the pilot programs that are being planned in each State/Territory. It was great to have the representatives from the various State/Territory Governments provide the most up-to-date information for each jurisdiction. As I noted in the Branch meetings, we are actively working with each State/Territory to ensure the ELICOS sector is factored into their planning processes.
I will be following up with members to assess your individual circumstances related to participating in pilot programs. It’s certainly a step in the right direction to bringing our industry much needed relief, however, as we discussed there are logistical and financial factors that will need to be addressed to participate in pilot programs.
We recognise that these programs only offer temporary relief and that more scalable solutions offering a safe pathway for greater numbers of students to return are required. As such, we continue to work closely with our partner goPassport to ensure our members are in the best position to respond.
Here to chat
Again, I would like to stress that I welcome any chance to speak with our members. If you have any concerns that you would like to raise, don’t hesitate to contact me.
