5 Insights and your moves before term 3
Author: George Liacos
Insight #1: Canberra’s New Money Comes With New Strings
Education Strategic Planning may seem sometime just too hard. This wonderful slow motion roller coaster. On Budget night the Treasurer trumpeted the A$31 billion uplift for schools next year—an historic bump that stretches to A$135.7 billion over the forward estimates. Scratch the surface and you’ll find the real story is not the dollars but the “Better and Fairer Schools” bilateral compacts tucked in behind them. Each a Each compact hard-wires funding to three things:
- Demonstrable learning progress,
- Evidence of reduced teacher admin time, and
- Transparent public reporting against new key performance measures.
Funding is no longer a blank cheque; it’s a performance contract. If your Education Strategy doesn’t convert line items into learner impact you’ll be left waving invoices at an empty ledger. (education.gov.au)
Insight #2: The “Teacher Time” Imperative Hits Policy Level
Those compacts lean heavily on the National Teacher Workload Reduction Fund, a new $25 million pool that’s already backing pilots in digital admin forms, generative AI lesson planning, and parent liaison officers. The language is telling: the Government wants to “maximise the value of a teacher’s time.” Money isn’t the scarcest resource in the system; minutes are. Any board still measuring success by spend alone is playing last decade’s game.
While the scale and economic logic is sound, many teachers feel a great deal of satisfaction comes from lesson planning; it’s the other admin and compliance sucks they want to be rid of.
(federalfinancialrelations.gov.au)
Insight #3: AI Moves From Thought Piece to Operating Manual
Six months ago AI in schools was a debate topic. Today 25 US states (and climbing) have formal guidance for K-12, and districts like Charlotte-Mecklenburg have anointed 30 “AI champion” schools to prototype everyday use. (aiforeducation.io, axios.com)
Education Strategic Planning is in this space at least simple: if you don’t publish an AI code of conduct by Term 4, you’ll look prehistoric. The leaders are issuing a v1 document now and booking six monthly refresh cycles; exactly how cyber security policies matured a decade ago.
Insight #4: Megatrends: Foresight Beats Forecasts
The OECD’s Trends Shaping Education 2025 reminds us that geopolitics, climate volatility, and demographic churn will buffet schools harder than any single gadget ever could. (oecd.org) Add the looming Measurement Framework for Schooling in Australia 2025, now expressly aligned to those bilateral compacts, and you have a data regime that will shine a Klieg light on outcomes; good, bad, or absent. (acara.edu.au)
In doing our Education Strategic Planning we have translated those macro-shocks into four “impact arenas” every board should play out quarterly:
- Fiscal resilience: Survive a two year funding drought.
- Talent gravity: Attract educators when hybrid work goes mainstream.
- Tech governance: Use the algorithm; don’t let it use you.
- Learner equity: Ensure innovation narrows, not widens, attainment gaps.
Foresight isn’t predicting; it’s rehearsing until improvisation feels rehearsed.
Insight #5: Skills Crunch: From Pipeline to Ecosystem
The World Economic Forum calls the global skills market “broken,” projecting 92 million jobs lost and 170 million created by 2030. (weforum.org) In April, the World Bank dropped a playbook on Global Skill Partnerships: source countries train workers for shortage roles in target economies, sharing both risk and reward. (gsp.cgdev.org)
For TAFEs, universities, and ambitious school systems, that’s a chance to recast themselves as skill exporters. Yes, it’s contrarian. So was offshore call centre work, until it wasn’t.
Six Moves to Make Before Term 3 Ends
| Move | Why Now | First 72-Hour Step |
| Time sink audit | Workload pilots go national in 2026. | Use a digital time log to tag low value tasks in one school week. |
| Draft AI Code | Parent and regulator scrutiny is coming fast. | Adapt AICD’s eight AI governance questions to your context and publish for comment. |
| Re-cost the Plan | New funding gauges ROI per student hour freed. | Re model each initiative by cost per learner hour. |
| Megatrend rehearsal | Crisis drill = smoother execution. | Run a board workshop with our Impact Arena cards. |
| Scope a Skill-Partnership MOU | Talent shortages will spike post 2026. | Identify two reciprocal partner economies (aged care nurses are hot). |
| Shift comms to outcomes | Compacts demand transparency. | Build a one page dashboard linking dollars to learner growth. |
Why an Impact Measurement Report Just Became Non-Negotiable
Think of the Impact Measurement Report as the scorecard your future funding will live or die on. The bilateral compacts, workload pilots, and updated national measurement framework all point to the same truth: stories alone won’t cut it; audited evidence will.
A robust report should:
- Quantify dollar-to-impact conversion: map each dollar to hours saved or learning gains achieved;
- Track teacher-time freed: the new north-star metric;
- Integrate AI ethics metrics: show the community you’re steering, not drifting;
- Align to ACARA’s refreshed KPMs: satisfy Canberra before they even ask;
- Publish open-data tables: pre-empt transparency demands and build public trust.
Boards that release an annual Impact Measurement Report (ideally timed to coincide with your AGM) will inoculate themselves against the next funding review, while those who delay will find their strategy reduced to aspiration on glossy paper.
Final Thought & Call to Action
Education is a slow-moving system until it isn’t. Budgets tighten, AI accelerates, skills markets fragment, all often in the same quarter. Strategy that fails to anticipate is just wishful thinking; strategy that fails to adapt is hope dressed as a plan.
Let’s build the map before the next storm arrives.
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