The 2025 Australian School Improvement Summit was held in Sydney, New South Wales on Wednesday 29 October.
Knowledge Matters: How to lift learning outcomes through leadership development, curriculum renewal and better classroom instruction.
Knowledge is what we think with*. The most powerful fuel for our young people’s creativity and imagination is how much they know and retain. Knowledge-rich curriculum expands students’ capacity to understand, to contemplate, to think critically and to solve problems.
Our young people will face unprecedented challenges. They must be prepared for a world of unimaginable technological developments. Knowledge is what humans think with and what AI uses to simulate thinking. Humans, afterall, are the original large language models.
Knowledge will be more, not less, important in the future. Are we ready?
* With thanks to Dr Greg Ashman, who originally coined this term in his 2017 blog post.
Speakers and Program
Natalie Wexler
KEYNOTE
American education advocate and author of The Knowledge Gap, Beyond the Science of Reading and co-author of The Writing Revolution
Murat Dizdar PSM
Secretary, NSW Department of Education
Dr Jenny Donovan
CEO, Australian Education Research Organisation
Dr Ben Jensen
CEO, Learning First
Dr Jennifer Buckingham OAM
Executive Director, Policy and Evidence, NSW Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation
Elena Pasquini Douglas
CEO, Knowledge Society and 500 Schools
Dallas McInerney
CEO, Catholic Schools NSW
Lisa Holt
Principal, Rosebud Secondary College
Paul McDermott
Chief Education Officer for School Excellence, NSW Department of Education
Caroline Reed
Co-CEO, Ochre Education Australia
Kevin Carragher
Director of Education and Research, Sydney Catholic Schools
Dr Nathaniel Swain
Teacher, Instructional Coach, author of Harnessing the Science of Learning
Dr Jordana Hunter
Education Program Director, Grattan Institute
Manisha Gazula
Principal, Marsden Road Public School
Dr Greg Ashman
Deputy Principal, Ballarat Clarendon College
Sue Knight
Acting Principal, Ararat West Primary School
Tom Dusevic
Policy Editor, The Australian
Lee Casuscelli
Director of Education, Australian Schools Plus
Stephanie Exton
CEO, Mornington Peninsula Foundation
Stacey Rowe
Program Lead, Fogarty EDvance and The 500 Schools Project
Dinner Speakers
Kate Fogarty
Dinner MC
Executive Director, Catholic Education Sandhurst
Hon. Erica Stanford
Speaker
Minister of Education, New Zealand
Rt. Hon. Sir Nick Gibb
Speaker
Former UK Minister of State (Minister for School Standards)
Hon. Courtney Houssos MLC
Speaker
Acting Minister for Education and Early Learning, NSW
Presenting Partners:
Thank you to our sponsors and partners
Presenting Partners
Partner
Media Partners
Thank you to our sponsors and partners
Presenting Partners:
Partner:
Media Partners:
