SMH Schools Summit 2025 as it happened: Prue Car speaks after funding deal, selective schools in the spotlight

That’s all from the 2025 Sydney Morning Herald Schools Summit. Some of the highlights of today’s key moments include:

• Education and Early Learning Minister Prue Car celebrated this week’s public school funding deal as a “historic moment for education”.
• NSW Department of Education secretary Murat Dizdar said that skills shortages in the Australian job market may be representative of a “push” towards university education as the only tertiary option.
• Former secretary of the federal Department of Education and Training Michele Bruniges spoke about the impact of a “cycle of negative perceptions” caused by the concentration of disadvantage in public schools.
• A panel on generative AI heard mixed responses on how new technologies can affect students.

We hope you enjoyed today’s coverage.

Tutoring colleges are “playing on parents’ vulnerabilities and their concerns” by targeting the parents of schoolchildren, says Meriden School principal Lisa Brown.

During a conversation on gifted education, Brown said that comprehensive schools could offer a more holistic education than selective schools, which she said offered a “highly pressurised and competitive” learning environment.

“I worry that to maintain that standard, that academic standard, at a selective school, there’s heavy tutoring and heavy pressure, and that means compromises in other areas. So then I worry that students aren’t receiving a well-rounded and balanced development during their adolescent years.”

Martin Graham, Deputy Secretary Learning and Student Wellbeing at the NSW Department of Education, said that many families with gifted students felt a push to leave their community to access specific types of schooling, and this could be alleviated through the inclusion of gifted learning programs in every school.

Professor Jae Jung, from the School of Education at UNSW reiterated this, saying “gifted students don’t only exist in selected schools. We have gifted students in all schools in the state.” With this concept, Jung said “we should never take away” options for gifted students, across the schooling spectrum.

Professor Jenny Gore, Laureate Professor at the School of Education at The University of Newcastle, has critiqued the politically motivated “dogma” of explicit education being reinforced by the state government at the Education Department, saying that the push “actually doesn’t capture the professionalism of teachers.

“I think we talk a lot about trust and respect for colleagues, we really need to acknowledge what our colleagues know...explicit instruction. Not to say they don’t need more support and capacity building, perhaps in that area, they know what to do, and we really need to respect that,” said Gore, during a panel on professional development at today’s Schools Summit.

Gore said that, after thousands of hours of teaching observation, she had never seen a class that was undertaken exclusively with an inquiry style of teaching.

“Think the biggest problem we have at the moment is this oppositional notion that we have either explicit or inquiry [teaching methods], and that’s a misrepresentation of the complexity of teachers’ work.”

Sarah Warby, director of professional practice and research at Loreto Kirribilli, said that teachers needed to be responsive to their students and have a “toolkit” that would allow them to have an “authentic impact.”

“If I went into a particular community, or community where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, that is in my heritage and family background, if I went in and said, ‘This is the way you’ve got to teach,’ or went in as a new teacher and said, ‘This is the way I’m going to teach you,’ isn’t that a new form of colonisation?” she said.

The recent establishment of a quality assurance oversight board has provided the NSW Education Standard Authority (NESA) with “a little bit more teeth” to manage the initial teacher education programs provided by universities, chief executive Paul Martin said at today’s summit.

The comments came after a question regarding the criticism of initial teacher education programs in relation to explicit teaching.

Martin said that criticism of the teacher education system had “occurred for pretty much every year of the last 50 years”, but that that didn’t mean “there aren’t legitimate critiques” of divergent pedagogical approaches taught in universities.

He said there were 109 separate education courses in the state and, while NESA requires those programs to meet syllabus requirements and to undergo assessment, Martin acknowledged that his team were “not sitting in every lecture”.

“There is a balance between the individual university having its own views academically expressed, and the expectations of the teachers of the schools and the children and the systems that they are going to be employed [in].”

Following remarks from Jenny Donovan, chief executive of the Australian Education Research Organisation, a panel is discussing how best to embrace explicit teaching methods in NSW schools.

David Stitt, principal of The Entrance Public School advocated for the methodology, saying that he had observed the change within his own school. Stitt said his school was “underperforming five years ago” but the school was now “significantly” overperforming.

In 2018, year 3 students at The Entrance Public School were receiving average or below-average results in NAPLAN testing. Last year, year 3 students at the school were receiving “well above” average results across all testing criteria.

“That just shows that, through this instruction, you can actually meet the needs of the diverse population within your classroom.”

Anthony Smith, teaching and learning co-ordinator at Narromine Christian School, said that “walking into a classroom that is showcasing a high quality, explicit instruction lesson it just has a buzz about it, and I get excited just talking about it”.

Generative AI deployed in the classroom and at home has the ability to “erode effort” and work against student learning, says Anthony England, director of innovative learning technologies at Pymble Ladies College.

Speaking on an AI panel at the Schools Summit, England said “learning is not a fast track thing. You struggle, you fail, you try again and you don’t get a quick answer. AI is so shiny, bright at giving a quick answer, that we might, through the pursuit of efficiency, short-change our students’ growth.”

The technology, however, also has “many different opportunities” in teaching, said Miriam Scott, from the Association of Independent Schools of NSW, who also noted that schools, like all workplaces, were “really overwhelmed” with their application of the technology.

“We have schools who are early adopters … and these are the schools who are actually leading the way for all of us, because they’re actually making the mistakes … AI literacy is digital literacy, and digital literacy is everybody’s responsibility.”

Alongside Scott, Paul Wood of the NSW Department of Education said that strong communication between staff, students and parents on the way AI can be used in assessments was integral to managing its use in schooling.

Lee Barrett, from CEnet, said that “teachers, admin staff, students: they need a seat at the table to ensure that AI tools aren’t just gimmicks, but that we are using [them] in the most fundamental, profound ways to benefit student growth.”

Following Michele Bruniges’ presentation on disadvantage in public schools, a panel is discussing how best to support students. Doug Taylor, chief executive of The Smith Family, said his charity worked extensively with students facing disadvantage, including Indigenous students and children from single-parent households, and a holistic approach needed to be taken to tackle the issue.

“We can’t teach our way out of poverty, teaching is necessary, but it’s not sufficient for the sort of challenges [disadvantaged students are facing],” he said. “What we really focus on is how incredibly important partnerships are to enable our schools to do the work that they need to do, to get the sort of outcomes that are necessary.”

Taylor said the cost-of-living crisis was exacerbating disadvantage, and more attention needed to be paid to the way students accessed technology.

Jeanette Holland, the principal of St Agnes Catholic High School in Rooty Hill, said teaching staff were “swamped with [student] data”, and it was important to humanise that data by connecting to families and fostering a sense of belonging among students who feel distant from the school environment.

“Building relationships with families is really important,” said Holland, who has staff at her school specialised to liaise with families from diverse backgrounds.

“They work closely with our families, reach out and connect them. Sometimes there is a language barrier, so we try to break down those barriers. Any way that we can engage and support our students and our families is really important.”