The students sitting in Australian classrooms today will define this country’s future.
Right now, too many of them are being left behind.
The evidence is clear, consistent and troubling. Despite decades of investment and reform, Australia’s education system continues to produce profoundly unequal outcomes. A child’s postcode, their family’s income and the circumstances they carry into the classroom remain among the strongest predictors of what they will achieve, and what opportunities will be available to them for the rest of their lives.
This is not a marginal problem. It is a structural one, and it is worsening.
WHAT THE EVIDENCE SHOWS
Nineteen years of national assessment data reveal that the gap in learning achievement between students from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds starts forming in the earliest years of school and grows consistently from that point.
By Year 9, the reading gap between students of highly educated parents and those whose parents did not complete secondary school has reached nearly six years of learning.
The difference between their outcomes is not talent. It is opportunity.
Nearly half of all Australian fifteen-year-olds do not meet national proficiency standards in mathematics, and more than four in ten fall below the standard in reading. Within those already-concerning national figures, the disparities by background are extraordinary: around seventy per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students do not meet the reading standard, nor do approximately sixty per cent of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, nor close to sixty-five per cent of students in remote communities.
An estimated one in five Australian students will not complete Year 12. Just forty-one per cent of young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds go on to enrol in university, compared with seventy per cent of those from high socioeconomic backgrounds.
OUR IMPACT TO DATE
$90M+
raised
630,000+
students helped
1,800+
schools supported
WHAT CHANGE LOOKS LIKE
The evidence about disadvantage is compelling. It is equally clear and compelling what works to change it.
When a child receives the early literacy support they need, the benefits accumulate across their entire educational journey, into employment and beyond. When a school leader has the skills and support to drive evidence-based improvement, the effect reaches every student in the building and persists across successive cohorts.
When a school develops the capacity to integrate wellbeing support, attendance interventions and strong teaching practice, students who would otherwise disengage find reasons to stay. These are not theoretical possibilities. They are things that are already happening in Australian schools — in schools that have been supported to make them happen
Our evolving operating model reflects a deliberate shift towards deeper, longer-term partnerships that have the greatest potential to create meaningful and sustainable change in education.
These partnerships begin at the incubation stage, where promising initiatives, interventions and ideas are supported to test, refine and demonstrate their impact. Successful programs then progress to the expansion stage, where evidence and insights are used to strengthen outcomes and extend reach.
Where there is clear potential for broader influence, we work alongside partners to scale effective solutions and champion advocacy efforts that address systemic challenges. By combining innovation, evidence and collaboration, we help drive lasting improvements that benefit students, schools and communities across the education landscape.
Our Programs
Schools Plus tackles the most pressing challenges in education across five key focus areas.
