Overview
- More than 1.27 million pupils returned to over 1,180 public and private schools on Monday, Aug 31, with many campuses using staggered starts or shorter hours to ease the transition.
- The Ministry of Education has put new rules into effect that remove homework for kindergarten to Year 2, ban screens in Year 6 for core subjects, and give equal weight to central exams and school assessments in Years 9–12.
- A ministerial ban on students bringing mobile phones to school is being enforced with penalties while schools roll out digital-citizenship lessons and an AI-literacy curriculum using supervised learning devices.
- Authorities deployed stepped-up safety and traffic measures including extra police patrols, drones, trained school security staff, increased bus services, and flexible federal work hours to reduce drop-off congestion and improve road safety.
- Airports and cultural agencies ran welcome-back campaigns for returning families and national leaders issued messages of support as child-safety organisations urged parents to focus on safe journeys, healthy routines, and online behaviour during the first weeks of term.