AI in Schools
TEQSA seizes ANU's chancellor pick, plus four more
Digital Attitudes — 1 May 2026
University governance in Australia changed yesterday and the precedent will outlive the people involved.
TEQSA is now picking ANU's next chancellor — a first for the sector
ANU council signed a voluntary undertaking on 27 April giving TEQSA control of the panel that will select Julie Bishop's replacement. The regulator chooses the chair (former TEQSA chief commissioner Peter Coaldrake) and at least half the panel members. Council retains the formal appointment power but must notify TEQSA within 30 days if it deviates from the panel's recommendation. Times Higher Education called it "an unprecedented intervention in the affairs of a public Australian university, whose governing bodies normally have unfettered choice over their own leadership."
Why this matters: This is the regulatory consequence of two years of governance failure at one institution, but the template now exists. Every council in the country should read the undertaking and ask whether their own governance review would survive the same scrutiny — because the next time a public university stumbles this badly, TEQSA does not need to invent the mechanism. Crikey: ANU under siege.
The teacher-shortage data is now telling us who is leaving and why
Three Australian researchers published an analysis on Monday at EduResearch Matters drawing on workforce data: 78 per cent of the teaching workforce are women, full-time teachers average 52 hours a week, 77 per cent of casual relief teachers are women, and a third of CRTs are working what amounts to full-time hours through the back door. The pattern is mid-career women moving from full-time roles into casual work, then out of the profession altogether — not for lack of commitment, but because the structure of the job assumes a worker without caring responsibilities.
Why this matters: The retention conversation has been stuck on workload-in-general. This puts a structural lens on it: the profession is bleeding the cohort it can least afford to lose, through a mechanism schools could redesign — job-share roles, genuinely part-time leadership, contracted hours that match the actual job. SBMs and principals who treat flexibility as an HR favour rather than workforce infrastructure are quietly shrinking their own talent pool. EduResearch Matters analysis.
Tasmania has rolled out an English-style schools model — and an Oxford academic says the evidence is not there
Stephanie Flower, a senior lecturer in education at Oxford Brookes who has spent her career inside England's multi-academy trusts, published a piece on 23 April arguing Tasmania has adopted the model on confirmation bias. Multi-school organisations — single executive teams running groups of schools — were piloted in Tasmania and are now mandatory state-wide. Flower's read of the English evidence is that MATs are not consistently more effective than the schools they replaced, and the high-profile trusts Tasmania consulted are not representative of the broader picture. Her phrase for what gets lost: children's "interests and life experiences were irrelevant in pursuit of school data."
Why this matters: A centralised, data-driven model is exactly the kind of structural change that looks decisive in a press release and ambiguous in the outcomes data five years later. For school leaders elsewhere — particularly in jurisdictions watching Tasmania closely — the question to ask now is not whether MSOs work, but what specifically Tasmania measured before deciding they would. EduResearch Matters article.
Victoria is locking in 15,000 more Free TAFE places — and the Centres of Excellence tell you where the workforce bets are
Premier Jacinta Allan and Skills Minister Colin Brooks confirmed on 24 April that the 2026-27 Victorian Budget will include $459.4 million for skills, funding 15,000 additional Free TAFE places in 2027 plus three new Centres of Excellence in renewable energy, home and community care, and digital technology. Free TAFE enrolments are at their highest in more than a decade — currently above 60,800.
Why this matters: The Centres of Excellence are the more interesting signal than the place numbers. Renewable energy, care, and digital are the workforce shortages the state expects to still be unresolved in 2030. Schools running senior pathways advice should be reading the list as a forecast, not a slogan — these are the courses that will have provider capacity, employer demand, and continued public subsidy through the next government cycle. Premier of Victoria announcement.
Victoria backs bilingual kindergartens — small money, useful signal
The Allan government committed $3.6 million in the 2026-27 Budget for bilingual kindergarten programs across the state. The funding extends existing bilingual offerings in Mandarin, Greek, Vietnamese, and several other community languages, and expands the program into additional sites in Melbourne's outer suburbs.
Why this matters: The dollar figure is modest and the program is not new, but the renewal locks in bilingual provision through the next term. For ECEC providers and primary schools mapping pathways, the signal is that early-language acquisition has cleared the recurring-funding bar — worth factoring into transition planning and workforce hiring for language-trained educators. Neos Kosmos coverage.
The thread today is who decides. A regulator deciding for a council. A jurisdiction deciding what counts as evidence. A budget deciding which workforce gaps the state will subsidise. The administrative architecture is doing a lot of the policy work this week. More on the governance landscape at digitalattitudes.com.au.