S&R Newsletter - At a Glance

Education at a Crossroads: What 2026 Is Already Teaching Us

The start of a new year always carries a strange emotional mix. Fresh planners and big goals sit alongside tight shoulders, racing thoughts, and the quiet weight of everything that didn’t quite resolve itself last year. As tutors, students, and educators, we see this pattern repeat every January. The calendar resets, but the systems we work within often do not.

As we step into 2026, Australian education finds itself in a moment of transition rather than certainty. Across schools and universities, the same questions keep surfacing: who is teaching, who is learning, who is being supported, and who is quietly slipping through the cracks?

This post brings together the key themes shaping education right now, from teacher shortages and artificial intelligence to early literacy, university reform, and the future we are heading toward, whether we plan for it or not.

Starting the Year with the Body in Mind

January tends to demand a lot from the brain while ignoring the body entirely. New timetables, academic pressure, financial stress, and expectation creep in quickly, often before students have had a chance to recover from the year before.

That’s why we began the year with January’s Monthly Mind Muscle-Up: Progressive Muscle Relaxation.

Progressive muscle relaxation is simple. For five minutes, you tense, hold, and release muscle groups throughout the body, paying attention to how tension feels and how relief arrives. The goal is not instant calm. Often, the most valuable moment is noticing just how tense you were to begin with.

This practice trains the nervous system to recognise safety and recovery. Learning does not happen well in a body that feels constantly under threat. Your brain learns best when your body knows it can breathe.

When One Teacher Covers Three Roles

It’s no secret that teaching is hard. Teachers manage classrooms, deliver curriculum, support wellbeing, adapt to behavioural needs, communicate with families, and increasingly absorb administrative and technological responsibilities.

Across Australia, teacher shortages have turned this already demanding role into a survival exercise.

With fewer staff available, many teachers are covering multiple classes, teaching outside their subject areas, losing planning time, and stepping into counselling roles for students with complex needs. Relief teachers are scarce. Burnout accelerates. Turnover increases.

When teachers are stretched thin, students feel it first.

Larger classes mean less individual attention. Exhausted teachers have less capacity for creativity, feedback, and emotional presence. Learning gaps widen, especially for students who already struggle. This is not just a workforce issue. It is a quality-of-education issue, and it disproportionately affects public schools, regional areas, and students with additional learning or mental health needs.

Australia does not just need more teachers. It needs teaching to be a job people can realistically stay in.

AI in Classrooms: Learning Tool or Academic Landmine?

Artificial intelligence is no longer futuristic. It is embedded in everyday school and university life.

Students use tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, and Quillbot to draft, summarise, and study. Universities are experimenting with AI-assisted lectures, feedback systems, and automated resources. On paper, this promises efficiency and accessibility.

In practice, many students are unsure where help ends and dependence begins.

Tutors and teachers report work that sounds polished but hollow. Students admit feeling anxious about producing anything without algorithmic assistance. Over time, reliance on AI can erode self-efficacy, the belief that “I can do this myself.” When learning becomes mediated through approval by software, confidence thins.

There is also a growing trust gap. Students are noticing AI-generated lectures and notes that repeat information, contradict previous content, or lack nuance. When education begins to feel automated, motivation drops and disengagement rises.

AI is not inherently harmful. Used well, it can support research, accessibility, and organisation. Used carelessly, it risks flattening creativity, critical thinking, and the human relationship at the heart of learning.

AI is a tool, not a thinker. The real challenge ahead is deciding whether classrooms are designed to help students think deeply or simply produce work quickly.

What the Universities Accord Could Change (and What It Won’t)

The Australian Government’s Universities Accord has been positioned as the most significant higher-education reform in decades. Its ambition is to reshape funding, expand access, and align universities more closely with workforce needs.

The Accord aims to increase participation from underrepresented groups, particularly students from low-SES backgrounds, regional areas, and First Nations communities. It signals a shift away from short-term fixes toward a longer-term vision for tertiary education.

In theory, this is about rebuilding trust and stability.

In practice, many of the pressures universities face now cannot be fixed overnight. Job cuts, course closures, casualisation of staff, and growing class sizes remain immediate realities. Universities are still heavily reliant on international student revenue, leaving them vulnerable to policy changes and global instability.

For graduates, the biggest unanswered question remains whether degrees will become more affordable and lead to secure employment, or simply be reshaped to meet labour market demand.

Reform may open doors. What matters is whether students can afford to walk through them.

The Literacy Lunge: Why Early Learning Still Shapes Everything

In some classrooms, children arrive already fluent in books. They know how stories work, how sentences flow, and how meaning builds. In others, students are still learning how letters combine years into formal schooling.

Early literacy develops quietly, long before tests and report cards. It grows through being read to, through conversation, through access to books and time. When these supports are missing, the gap widens early and fast.

By primary school, differences in reading ability can be stark. Teachers intervene where they can, but without enough time, resources, or specialist support, many students are left catching up while the curriculum keeps moving forward.

Literacy is not just about reading words. It shapes confidence, comprehension, and a student’s sense of belonging at school. When early learning is inequitable, the effects echo through every year that follows.

Education or Export? International Students and Identity

International students have long been a central pillar of Australia’s education system. Their fees support domestic education, research, staffing, and infrastructure. They also contribute to cultural exchange and global relationships.

At the same time, tightening visa rules, enrolment caps, and rising living costs have left many international students feeling transactional rather than welcomed. Universities are asked to expand domestic access while navigating political pressure around migration and housing.

The result is a growing tension. Are international students being valued as learners, or managed as an export commodity?

When education policy is driven primarily by economics, trust erodes. And when trust erodes, the entire system feels less stable for everyone within it.

Where Will We Be in 12 Months?

Australian education is unlikely to look “fixed” a year from now. Teacher shortages will persist without meaningful workload reform. Universities will continue restructuring as funding models evolve. Literacy gaps will remain without sustained early intervention. Technology will keep advancing faster than policy.

But the next twelve months will clarify direction.

We will see whether education is treated as a long-term public investment or managed through short-term pressure relief. Whether student wellbeing becomes central or remains peripheral. Whether learning stays human at its core.

The future is not abstract. It is already forming.

The question is whether we are shaping it deliberately or simply reacting to it.

Truth to the Teachers: Why Learning Styles Still Matter

Every classroom is a mix of minds. Some students learn best through visuals, others through discussion, movement, structure, or reflection.

Considering learning styles is not about labelling students or creating dozens of lesson plans. It is about reducing the friction between how information is taught and how it is received.

When instruction aligns with how students naturally process information, cognitive load drops, engagement increases, and confidence grows. Students persist longer, participate more willingly, and avoid learning less often.

This is flexibility within structure. A diagram alongside an explanation. Discussion paired with writing. Movement woven into content-heavy lessons.

When students feel capable, behaviour often follows. When they feel understood, learning becomes collaborative rather than combative.

Teaching works best when it works with the brain, not against it.