Update Our Schools

Design rationale

The Better and Fairer Schools Agreement puts every public-school system on a path to full Schooling Resource Standard funding, but the transition is uneven and parts of the national funding framework continue through to 2034. Some jurisdictions have already reached, or are scheduled to reach, headline 100% SRS funding much earlier, while the newer agreements also phase out indirect expenditure and strengthen what counts toward full funding. Earlier milestones would be preserved, while the complete funding transition would be finished nationally by 2030. Binding annual milestones and independent compliance review would then make that funding path harder for future governments to delay or unwind.

Funding benchmark

The Schooling Resource Standard (SRS) would remain the national recurrent-funding benchmark, combining a base amount with additional loadings for student and school needs. Its base, loadings and indexation settings would be periodically reviewed so full funding continues to reflect a current estimate of educational resource needs rather than simply perpetuating an inherited benchmark. The present base amounts derive from a benchmark established in 2018, and the current agreement already provides for a review of the SRS base and loading methodology.

Funding integrity

Annual federal and state contribution schedules would be set through school-funding law and bilateral agreements, while any jurisdiction already due to reach full funding before 2030 would retain that earlier date. Only eligible recurrent school expenditure would count towards the required funding shares. Existing independent scrutiny of state and territory contribution requirements would continue through the National School Resourcing Board or its successor.

System-level allocation

Full SRS funding is a commitment to adequately resource each public-school system, not to require every school to receive its individually calculated SRS as a direct cash allocation. States and territories may continue to redistribute resources between their schools through transparent needs-based funding arrangements and provide services at a system level where that better meets student needs.

Residual variation

No national formula can perfectly capture every school’s circumstances. States and territories would retain needs-based discretion to respond to unusual local costs, while independent SRS reviews would examine whether recurring funding gaps reveal deficiencies in the base amount, loadings, or indexation. Persistent patterns would therefore feed back into later recalibration of the national benchmark rather than accumulating unnoticed.

Implementation outline

Federal funding legislation and bilateral agreements would be updated so public-school systems not already reaching 100% of the SRS earlier do so by 2030. Annual contribution schedules and the phase-out of indirect expenditure would be aligned with that timetable, using the existing funding, compliance, and independent-review framework rather than creating a parallel system.

Reference

Better and Fairer Schools Agreement 2025–2034 — Australian Government Department of Education | Schooling Resource Standard — Australian Government Department of Education | How Australian Government funding for schools is distributed according to need — Australian Government Department of Education

Design rationale

Teachers are increasingly expected to combine teaching with administration, compliance, student support, coordination, and other work that does not always require a qualified teacher. Where schools lack sufficient administrative, education-support, counselling, and specialist staff, those functions fall back onto teachers and school leaders, reducing the time available for teaching, preparation, collaboration, and professional development. The National Teacher Workforce Action Plan similarly identifies unnecessary workload as a contributor to teacher retention problems.

Staffing model

National staffing benchmarks would reflect student numbers and needs, including disability, additional learning needs, language needs, and wellbeing needs, rather than prescribe the same staffing mix for every school. Education support officers, special education teachers, counsellors, administrative staff, and other specialists could be provided directly within schools or through shared regional services where that better suits smaller or remote communities.

Workload boundary

Work should move away from teachers where it does not require their teaching qualifications or professional judgement. Curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and the educational relationship with students would remain teacher responsibilities, while routine administration and specialist non-teaching functions would be assigned to staff trained for those roles.

Existing workforce reforms

The National Teacher Workforce Action Plan already includes workload reduction as a national priority. Its Workload Reduction Fund is supporting 27 pilots, including projects that add administrative and support staff or centralise work currently performed by teachers and school leaders. We would turn that approach into an enduring staffing and workload standard rather than a collection of pilots.

Residual boundary

Some school responsibilities naturally cross teaching, wellbeing, administration, and family engagement, so they cannot always be cleanly divided between professions. Better staffing can reduce unnecessary teacher workload, but some coordination between teachers and support staff will remain part of running a school well.

Implementation outline

National staffing and workload standards would be incorporated into federal-state school funding and reform agreements, with states and territories retaining responsibility for employment structures and local deployment. Evidence from the existing workload-reduction pilots would inform the initial staffing benchmarks and task boundaries.

Reference

National Teacher Workforce Action Plan — Australian Government Department of Education | Workload Reduction Fund Pilots — Australian Government Department of Education

Design rationale

Civics and Citizenship already exists within the Australian Curriculum and critical thinking is already intended to operate through it, but inclusion on paper has not produced consistent civic knowledge. In the 2024 national assessment, only 43% of Year 6 students and 28% of Year 10 students reached the proficient standard, both significantly below the 2019 results. A recent parliamentary inquiry also found substantial variation in how civics is actually delivered between jurisdictions and schools.

National curriculum

The curriculum would provide an identifiable and protected civics sequence rather than relying on civic knowledge to emerge incidentally across other subjects. It would cover how Parliament, government, courts, federalism, elections, preferential voting, and law work; the rights and responsibilities people hold; and the practical mechanisms available to participate in civic life.

Critical reasoning, media literacy, and information literacy would be taught within that civic context so students practise evaluating evidence, competing claims, sources, persuasion, and misinformation rather than treating critical thinking as an abstract capability.

Teaching requirement

Years 9 and 10 would receive a minimum of 10 hours of civics and citizenship education each year, consistent with the recommendation of the 2025 parliamentary inquiry. Senior secondary students would also complete a practical civic module before leaving school, covering enrolment, voting, electoral systems, and the main ways citizens can engage with public institutions.

Political neutrality

Civics education should teach students how to think about public questions, not what political conclusions to reach. Curriculum and assessment would test knowledge, reasoning, use of evidence, and understanding of competing perspectives rather than agreement with a preferred political position. Contemporary contested issues can be used for learning where they are presented in a way that allows genuine examination and disagreement.

Delivery and assessment

Jurisdictions would report annually on how the national civics requirement is being delivered. Existing national Civics and Citizenship assessment would continue to measure proficiency, while nationally aligned teaching resources and professional development would support teachers in delivering the curriculum consistently. This follows the broad architecture recommended by the parliamentary inquiry without turning civics into another high-stakes individual testing regime.

Implementation outline

The next Australian Curriculum review would establish the nationally aligned civics sequence, minimum teaching requirements, and senior secondary module. Federal-state education agreements would support consistent implementation, reporting, teacher resources, and professional development while states and territories retain ordinary responsibility for school delivery.

Reference

From Classroom to Community: Civics education and political participation in Australia — Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters | National Assessment Program — Civics and Citizenship results — ACARA.

Design rationale

NAPLAN provides a common national measure of literacy and numeracy in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9, and its earlier reporting now gives schools more useful diagnostic information during the school year. ACARA explicitly states that NAPLAN is a snapshot, should be considered alongside other assessment evidence, and is not designed to measure teacher or school performance in isolation.

My School nevertheless publishes school-average NAPLAN results and comparisons with students of similar backgrounds and national results. ACARA itself warns that NAPLAN represents only one aspect of school performance and has repeatedly criticised out-of-context school league tables as misleading. The problem is therefore not national testing or school comparison itself, but treating students’ absolute achievement as a measure of what a school has contributed to their learning.

Assessment purpose

NAPLAN would remain a national literacy and numeracy assessment, with individual results available to students, families, teachers, and schools. Education authorities would retain the data needed to identify learning gaps, allocate support, evaluate programs, and monitor performance across regions and demographic groups.

Teacher assessment

NAPLAN results could contribute to teacher performance and development where they provide relevant evidence about student learning. This may include growth by the same students between successive NAPLAN assessments, but may never rely on students’ absolute achievement levels.

Longitudinal growth still cannot be attributed cleanly to an individual teacher. Students pass through multiple teachers between NAPLAN assessments, literacy and numeracy develop across subjects and school-wide programs, and factors outside a teacher’s control continue to affect progress. NAPLAN growth data may therefore contribute to teacher assessment only alongside classroom assessment, professional practice, observation, student work, and other evidence of learning, and must never be converted into an automatic teacher-performance score. This is consistent with the existing Australian Teacher Performance and Development Framework, which requires teacher evaluation to draw on multiple sources of evidence.

Public reporting

My School would continue to provide comparable information about school performance, but public comparisons would be limited to student progress measures. Absolute proficiency information would remain available to show whether students are meeting national standards, but would not be used to rank schools.

Progress comparisons would account for students’ starting achievement and relevant background characteristics, building on the matched-student progress measures My School already uses.

Residual limits

NAPLAN measures literacy and numeracy at particular points in time and cannot capture the full educational progress of a student or the overall quality of a school. Even contextualised progress measures cannot perfectly isolate the contribution of teaching from family circumstances, student characteristics, attendance, and other influences. National testing should therefore remain one source of evidence rather than becoming a complete measure of educational quality.

Implementation outline

National assessment and reporting arrangements would be updated through the Education Ministers Meeting and ACARA so public school comparisons use student progress measures rather than average achievement scores, while individual and system-level diagnostic uses of NAPLAN are retained. Teacher performance frameworks and funding agreements would prohibit the use of students’ absolute achievement levels as a measure of individual teacher performance.

Reference

National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy | Australian Teacher Performance and Development Framework | Using value-added measures to identify school contributions to student learning

Design rationale

Australia's VET system already allows Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) to assess skills gained through previous training, work, and life experience against nationally recognised competencies. Existing RPL can reduce the training needed for a qualification, while current federal programs are already using RPL and gap training to fast-track experienced but unqualified workers.

Access remains centred on provider-based RPL processes rather than a clear general pathway built around assessment before training. Overseas skills assessment also demonstrates that competence can be tested through documentary evidence, technical interviews, and practical assessment, even though a migration skills assessment does not itself necessarily confer the corresponding Australian qualification.

We would make direct assessment of existing competence a normal route to a nationally recognised VET qualification, rather than requiring people who already possess the relevant skills to undertake equivalent training again.

Competency assessment

Assessment-only does not mean exam-only. The form of assessment would depend on the competency being demonstrated and could include documentary evidence, technical questioning, practical demonstration, direct observation, or other valid forms of competency assessment.

The same competency requirements would apply whether someone reaches them through training or through existing skills and experience. Where every required competency can be demonstrated, completing a training course would not be required merely to obtain the qualification.

Overseas skills

An overseas qualification would provide evidence of previous learning rather than being either automatically accepted or automatically disregarded. Applicants could demonstrate their actual competence against the requirements of the relevant Australian qualification, including through practical or technical assessment where appropriate.

Trades Recognition Australia already uses this general approach in parts of its overseas skills assessment system, combining documentary evidence with technical interviews and, for some occupations, compulsory practical assessment.

Gap training

Where assessment identifies only part of the required competency, training would be limited to the remaining gaps rather than requiring the person to complete the entire course. Existing federal RPL guidance already recognises gap training as the appropriate response where demonstrated skills do not fully satisfy a qualification.

Australian-specific requirements could therefore still be taught where necessary without forcing someone to repeat competencies they have already demonstrated.

Qualification integrity

Assessment-only pathways would apply the same competency standard as training-based pathways. Qualifications could not be awarded merely because an applicant possesses experience, an overseas certificate, or documentary evidence; the required competencies must actually be demonstrated.

This distinction is important because ASQA identifies inadequate and fraudulent RPL assessment as an existing integrity risk. Rigorous competency assessment is therefore a condition of recognising existing skills, not something relaxed in order to accelerate qualification.

Licensing and registration

A VET qualification would not override separate occupational licensing, registration, supervised-practice, or migration requirements. Where an occupation legitimately requires Australian-specific regulatory, safety, or workplace knowledge, those requirements would remain.

Existing overseas trade arrangements already distinguish between demonstrated technical competence and Australian-specific requirements in licensed occupations, including supervised work and local licensing requirements.

Implementation outline

National VET standards and federal-state skills agreements would establish assessment-only pathways for qualifications where competency can validly be demonstrated without prescribed training. Existing RPL assessment systems would provide the foundation, with training providers continuing to assess competence against nationally recognised qualification requirements and provide training only where gaps remain.

The existing Advanced Entry Trades Training program provides a current model for combining formal recognition of existing competence with targeted gap training rather than requiring experienced workers to begin a qualification from scratch.

References

Australian Skills Quality Authority — Credit transfer and recognition of prior learning | Australian Government Department of Employment and Workplace Relations — Recognition of Prior Learning | Australian Government Department of Employment and Workplace Relations — Advanced Entry Trades Training program | Trades Recognition Australia — Offshore Skills Assessment Program

Design rationale

Australia’s public universities should not need to rely on ever-expanding international student revenue to fund core teaching and research. When they do, higher education policy, student migration, and institutional survival start to pull in the same direction regardless of what the education system actually needs. A more stable model should reduce that dependence without pretending universities can absorb the transition on goodwill alone. The aim is to replace passive dependence with a funding structure that has its own reason to keep working over time.

Funding mechanism

The core funding change is a higher education contribution-credit system for industries that rely heavily on university-trained labour. Employers in degree-reliant sectors would contribute to a higher education sustainability fund, but could earn back some or all of that contribution through accredited participation such as paid placements, shared teaching infrastructure, industry training partnerships, or research collaboration. That makes the model easier to sustain politically than a simple levy because businesses can reduce their liability by helping build the graduate pipeline they depend on.

Transition support

A transition levy on international education revenue can support the shift away from overdependence while universities rebalance their funding mix. This is not the long-term answer on its own. Its role is to help unwind an entrenched model rather than lock the system into permanent reliance on the same revenue source.

System interaction

This reform sits where university funding, international education, and migration settings overlap. It works best when paired with tighter provider standards, clearer course-integrity rules, and visa settings that treat student pathways as education pathways rather than as an open-ended revenue and migration valve. The Managed Growth Funding system already points toward a more planned and transparent domestic funding structure; together, these changes would push the sector further away from fee-growth dependence.

Residual risks

Some universities are already deeply reliant on international fee revenue, so the transition will not land evenly across the sector. Business participation may also cluster too heavily in high-status industries, leaving weaker disciplines or regional institutions with less support. These risks can be managed through equalising design features such as baseline funding floors, regional weighting, discipline-balancing rules, and limits on how narrowly contribution credits can be concentrated.

Implementation outline

The federal government would establish the contribution-credit system in higher-education funding law, define eligible employer contributions and credit-earning activities, create the transition fund and levy settings, and align provider regulation and student visa integrity rules to the rebuilt funding model. The funding framework should also include anti-backsliding rules so universities are not pushed back into migration-volume dependence once the transition period ends.

Reference

Australia's universities under sustained financial strain ...

Design rationale

Competitive research funding is often structured around grant periods that are shorter than the research programs they support, requiring successful teams to repeatedly compete for continuation while projects, staff, and research infrastructure remain dependent on uncertain future rounds. This creates avoidable administrative work and makes sustained research capability harder to maintain.

The Australian Research Council's 2026 redesign of the National Competitive Grants Program is moving in a similar direction through fewer schemes, streamlined administration, more project-based funding, and dedicated support for major long-term research. We would apply long-horizon funding and continuation arrangements across federal competitive research programs rather than leaving them dependent on the design of individual schemes.

Funding horizon

Grant periods would vary with the scale and expected duration of the research rather than forcing substantially different projects into similarly short funding cycles. Funding bodies would publish multi-year funding availability and grant schedules far enough ahead for research institutions to plan recruitment, facilities, and project continuity.

Continuation and competition

Long-running research could seek continuation through independent review focused on progress, remaining research value, and the case for further work rather than repeatedly rebuilding a full proposal from the beginning. Continuation would not be automatic, and funding programs would retain open competition for new researchers, projects, and exploratory ideas.

System interaction

The redesigned National Competitive Grants Program will progressively introduce new schemes between 2027 and 2029, including support for exploratory research, early-career researchers, collaboration, and major long-term projects. The funding-security model should complement that structure rather than recreate another parallel grants system.

Residual trade-off

Longer funding commitments inevitably reduce some flexibility to redirect research budgets when new opportunities emerge. Independent review and continued open grant rounds can preserve room for new work, but a system that provides genuine long-term certainty cannot also keep every future funding decision completely open.

Implementation outline

Federal competitive research programs would progressively adopt longer scale-appropriate grant periods, multi-year forward funding schedules, and continuation review as existing schemes are renewed. The ARC's current NCGP transition provides the immediate opportunity to embed these settings without disrupting grants already underway.

Reference

Australian Research Council — New NCGP Schemes: Overview | Australian Research Council — Release of the National Competitive Grants Program Policy Review Final Report