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Meet the 41 educators driving culture and reform across Australian schools – and the forces shaping education in 2026
The best educators in Australia influencing culture and reform in 2026 share one defining characteristic: they refuse to accept the gap between what Australian education promises and what students and teachers actually experience. From individual classrooms to national curriculum reform, from single schools to hundreds of institutions, the 41 educators named in The Educator’s sixth annual Most Influential Educators list are meeting that gap head-on.
The most urgent question facing them is one that schools can no longer defer: is AI something to ban or something to teach students to use? For Melissa Evans, co-founder of education consultancy The EduShift Collective, the answer is unambiguous. “If we’re still thinking, should we ban AI or not, we’re already one step behind,” she says. The real task is helping students become fluent and discerning with the tools that will define their working lives.
That challenge sits inside a wider set of pressures bearing down on Australian schools. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Schools 2025 report, released in March 2026, there are now 4,160,918 students enrolled across 9,673 Australian schools – the highest number on record. More students, more complexity, more expectation – and a workforce already stretched. The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2024 found that 42% of lower secondary school principals in Australia indicated that teacher shortages hinder the quality of instruction – nearly double the OECD average of 23% and a sharp rise from just 14% in 2018.
Meanwhile, the gap between ambitious policy and consistent classroom practice remains one of Australian education’s most persistent challenges. “Policy matters, but classrooms and schools are where change actually happens,” says Jenny Donovan, chief executive officer of the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) in Australia. “A gap remains between what works and what is consistently implemented.”
This is the landscape in which this year’s list was compiled. The 41 educators recognised here as some of the best in 2026 demonstrate that influence over culture and reform comes in many forms. For some, it is felt every day in a single classroom – in the relationships built with students, the lessons designed and the confidence quietly grown in a young person. For others, it operates at a structural and strategic level, shaping hundreds of schools, informing government policy or equipping teachers themselves to do their work better. What unites them is not the scale of their reach, but the depth of their commitment to improving Australian education.
The pressures shaping Australian education in 2026 are not new, but they are intensifying. A 2024 survey of 953 primary and secondary schools by the Australian Education Union (AEU) found that almost 83% of schools were experiencing teacher shortages, with many relying on merged classes, relief staff and teachers taking on extra duties simply to keep operating. And behind the numbers is a more human story about culture, trust and workload.
The OECD’s TALIS 2024 – the largest international survey of teachers and school leaders, covering 280,000 educators across 55 countries, managed in Australia by the Australian Council for Educational Research – found that Australian lower secondary teachers work an average of 46.5 hours per week, the third-longest working week in the OECD and well above the global average of 40.8 hours. Less than half of that time is spent actually teaching. A further 4.7 hours per week is consumed by administration – the fourth highest in the OECD and more than 50% above the OECD average of three hours.
The toll is visible. TALIS 2024 found that 34% of Australian teachers experience stress “a lot” in their work – nearly double the OECD average of 19%. A further 15% say their job negatively impacts their mental health “a lot”. And yet the same data reveals something important: more than 80% of Australian teachers report overall job satisfaction, and 74% say the advantages of teaching outweigh the disadvantages. This is not a profession in collapse – it is a profession under strain, held together by purpose and a commitment to culture change from within.
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Jeannou Stijns, director of education at Randstad in Australia, draws on the company’s 2026 Workmonitor research, The Great Workforce Adaptation, to add a further dimension to the retention challenge. “Influential educators are now defined by their emotional intelligence and their ability to act as cultural anchors within their schools,” she says.
According to that research, 42% of educators report leaving a school because they could not trust their leadership team, and 56% of Australian educator respondents cite work-life balance as the single most important reason they stay. The same research found that, with trust in leadership declining globally, 72% of workers now rely on their direct manager as their primary source of stability – a finding that underscores just how much the quality of school leadership shapes whether teachers stay or go.
The AI disruption layers further complexity onto a workforce already stretched. TALIS 2024 found that 66% of Australia’s lower secondary teachers used AI in the past year – ranking Australia fourth out of 55 education systems and nearly double the OECD average of 36%. But the picture is not straightforwardly positive. The most commonly reported concern among Australian teachers was AI enabling students to misrepresent others’ work as their own, cited by 87% of lower secondary teachers. And among those who have not yet adopted AI, 75% say they lack the knowledge and skills to begin.
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Teachers know AI is changing what their students will face. What they need is not another policy statement, but someone to sit with them and work through what it means for Monday morning. That is precisely the gap that this year’s most influential educators – those driving real culture change and curriculum reform across Australian schools – are working to close.
Underpinning all of this is the curriculum-to-classroom gap that Phil Lambert, founder of Phil Lambert Consulting (PLC) in Sydney, has spent his career trying to close. “Governments know the competencies young people need for the future,” Lambert says. “They know businesses are looking for collaboration, resilience and digital literacy. But curricula are pretty much standard and very much not unlike what I was exposed to in my own schooling.” The AERO is working to address this gap: since its establishment in 2021, more than 118,000 teachers and school leaders have accessed its flagship model of learning and teaching, and its Learning Partner project has now supported 53 schools across four states to embed evidence-based teaching practices sustainably.
Phil Lambert has spent more than a decade operating at a level most educators never reach – advising ministries of education, education secretaries, and their agencies across Australia and internationally through Phil Lambert Consulting (PLC), his Sydney-based consultancy. He led the development of Australia’s first national curriculum as general manager at the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), and has since taken that experience to governments in Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and beyond. Currently, he serves on a board in Brazil that advises the government on teacher professional learning and chairs Together for Humanity, an initiative bringing Jewish and Muslim students together across Australia.
What makes Lambert one of the best educators in Australia, influencing culture and reform, is precisely the breadth of his vantage point. He has been a teacher, a principal, a school inspector, a bureaucrat, and an international consultant. That range gives him something rare in education policy: the ability to see both what governments are trying to achieve and what is actually achievable inside a classroom.
“Teachers are pragmatic,” he says. “They don’t accept everything they’re given. Ultimately, teachers make decisions about what they teach and what they don’t teach and how they teach. No one is actually in their classroom observing them all the time.” To influence school culture and drive lasting reform, Lambert argues, you need to offer something that genuinely resonates – something teachers can see improving the lives of the young people in front of them.
His most recent work for UNESCO offers a sobering case study in the gap between policy ambition and classroom practice. Contracted to review climate change education globally, Lambert found that despite bold national commitments, meaningful climate education is rare. “There’s very little happening across the globe, despite what countries have actually said,” he says. “Only Singapore and Italy emerged as genuine leaders, alongside five case studies from Brazil, Africa and the Middle East where programs matched their rhetoric.”
Lambert is also acutely aware of the limits of policy borrowing – the habit of governments reaching for what appears to work in Singapore, England, or the US and transplanting it wholesale. “You can’t transport reforms into a different context, a different set of circumstances and expect the same results,” he says. “Even the people from those other nations can tell you what the deficiencies are.”
Q: How do you define influence in education?
“I think I’ve been fortunate to have had multiple roles – teacher, principal, bureaucrat and consultant – so when I talk to policymakers or ministers about reforms, I actually know what is likely to work in schools. Teachers care about the young people in their class. They see them as the number one stakeholders. To influence them, you have to have something that resonates with them and is likely to improve the learning of their students.”
Q: What’s your advice to educators earlier in their careers who want to build broader influence?
“Whatever you do, don’t leave a job desperate to get out. Love the work you do. And then once you get to a point where you want to do something different and you’re genuinely interested in it, that’s when you go. I’ve loved every role I’ve had. I think that’s been my secret to success.”
Q: Where is curriculum reform most urgently needed in Australia?
“Governments understand that businesses need employees with collaboration, resilience and digital literacy. But curricula remain largely traditional and unchanged from what previous generations experienced. Either they ask me to diagnose why the change isn’t happening – often it’s because the curriculum or assessment doesn’t enable it – or they want advice on how to embed modern competencies from the outset.”
Melissa Evans spent more than 20 years in Australian schools – as a classroom teacher, a school leader and, ultimately, a principal – before making a deliberate decision to take her experience somewhere it could reach further. Today, she co-leads The EduShift Collective, an education consultancy she founded with a colleague from her teaching days, while also working at Atomi, an edtech company. In a recent two-week period, she spoke to more than 600 principals through her edtech work.
Her definition of influence is worth sitting with. “I don’t think being influential means you necessarily need to have the loudest voice in the room,” she says. “It’s about just walking alongside people, helping them see those possibilities and challenging their assumptions in a really supportive way.” It is a philosophy that shapes everything The EduShift Collective does – deliberately avoiding prescriptive programs in favour of understanding each school’s individual context. For Evans, culture change in Australian schools does not come from mandates; it comes from sustained, trusted relationships built one staffroom at a time.
The practical expression of that philosophy is striking. Evans recently spent an entire week at a single school, running one-on-one half-hour sessions with teachers for five consecutive days. “Just to see their eyes light up and go, ‘Oh, I can do this, and I’ve got help,’” she says. “That’s probably what I’m most proud of – just being able to chip away and help the everyday teacher think about how they can transform their practice.”
Evans is clear-eyed about what the TALIS 2024 data confirms anecdotally in every school she enters: teachers are using AI, but the challenge is confidence and direction, not access. Of those who have not yet adopted AI, 75% say they simply do not know how to begin. Her approach is to ground the conversation in something more fundamental than any particular tool. “I like to come back to the human capabilities that our kids need the most,” she says. “When teachers can see they can still do those things, it’s like, great – now let’s look at the tools.”
She is also direct about what happens when schools avoid the harder question. “In Australia, schools are still debating whether to ban AI or allow it. If we’re still thinking that way, we’re already one step behind. Students need to learn discernment and fluency – because AI is not going anywhere.”
Initiative fatigue is another challenge Evans encounters consistently. “There are so many schools that have an amazing vision, but that vision can often never be seen in the day-to-day experience of a student every single day, every single lesson,” she says. The work of The EduShift Collective, in many cases, is helping schools connect the aspiration to the practice – not by adding more but by helping them understand what they already have and what is genuinely missing.
Q: What does genuine influence in education look like to you?
“Being influential is about creating conditions where people feel safe, where they can start to think differently about what’s possible. It’s a real journey with people. I like to walk alongside people, not just stand up front somewhere and say my influence and what I think.”
Q: What is the most common challenge teachers bring to you right now?
“Teachers are really just struggling with AI – where do I start, what do I do, who do I trust and how do I navigate this. There’s a lot of noise, and it can be quite sensationalised. I try to ground it back in the things that matter most: the human capabilities our kids need. The tools might be changing, but the core of making great humans needs to remain.”
Q: How do you decide what kind of support a school needs?
“We’ve intentionally not built cookie-cutter programs. We have a framework that helps schools audit themselves, but every school is different depending on so many different factors. It’s really important to understand who they are and their story first. Some schools start with a one-off workshop; others end up in a year-long engagement. And the most powerful impact comes from that sustained relationship – being there while the busy day-to-day keeps happening.”
Michael Hornby came to Ormiston College, a Prep to Year 12 independent college in Queensland with an Early Learning Centre, from a career that began in Scotland before nearly two decades in the Queensland State Education System. Stepping into the role of headmaster and chief executive officer of a Prep to Year 12 independent college with an Early Learning Centre, he describes the transition as both challenging and energising.
His first year at Ormiston has been defined by a deliberate commitment to listening before leading. Rather than arriving with a ready-made agenda, Hornby invested in one-on-one staff conversations and collaborative forums to understand the college's history, values, and aspirations. From that foundation, he began co-constructing staff norms, strengthening leadership structures, and investing in professional growth - building the conditions, as he puts it, for others to thrive.
“My mindset has been grounded in people-centred, values-driven leadership”, he says. “Creating the conditions for others to thrive while setting a clear direction.” Running in parallel with that cultural renewal is the progression of the College Masterplan – a long-term infrastructure investment that Hornby sees as the physical expression of the school's educational vision.
His definition of success is unambiguous. “Success in my role is defined by students achieving more than they ever believed possible,” he says. "Whether in the classroom, on the stage, on the sporting field or through values-driven leadership, student growth is the ultimate measure. Every decision I make is anchored in one priority: enabling students to thrive.”
On AI, Hornby takes a forward-leaning stance. Rather than framing it as a threat or a distraction, he describes it as the most significant opportunity currently facing Australian schools. “We are only beginning to understand its potential to transform how we operate, teach, and support students”, he says. “My approach has been to lean into learning, experimentation and strategic adoption.” His view is that the schools that build that capability now will deliver more personalised, efficient and future-focused education for the students who need it most.”
That willingness to lean into discomfort extends to his own leadership. Hornby is explicit about modelling the behaviours he expects from his community. “The principal or headmaster must be the lead learner”, he says. “Whether it's engaging with staff in professional learning, being visible and present with students, or demonstrating the behaviours and values we expect, leadership by example sets the tone for the entire school.”
His motivation, he says, comes from both the privilege of the role and the people around him. Born in Narrandera, a small country town in New South Wales, he describes feeling genuinely grateful for the path he has been given. Outside of school, his wife and four children keep him grounded. “They remind me daily of the importance of being a good person first and a good leader second,” he says.
Q: What do you define as influential in an educational context?
“Influence in an educational context is the ability to shape thinking, culture, and opportunity across the broader education landscape. It’s not just about leading within one school – it’s about contributing to the direction of education more widely and, through that, positively impacting society. An influential educator elevates others, drives meaningful change and leaves a legacy that extends beyond their immediate community.”
Q: What has been the biggest challenge you’ve navigated over the past year?
“The most significant shift, and opportunity, in our industry right now is the emergence of AI. We are only beginning to understand its potential to transform how we operate, teach, and support students. My approach has been to lean into learning, experimentation, and strategic adoption. As we build our capability and confidence, our students will be the beneficiaries of more personalised, efficient, and future-focused education.”
Q: What does leading by example look like for you day to day?
“The principal or headmaster must be the lead learner in the community. I believe in modelling curiosity, humility, and continuous improvement. Whether it’s engaging with staff in professional learning, being visible and present with students, or demonstrating the behaviours and values we expect from our community – leadership by example sets the tone for the entire school.”
Q: Where do you want to take Ormiston College from here?
“My long-term goal is to take Ormiston College from great to exceptional. In the short term, my focus is on continuing to learn – about the college, about leadership and about myself. I love pushing my own boundaries; running the Brisbane Marathon recently was a reminder of what's possible with discipline and commitment.”
The next 12–24 months in Australian education will be defined by whether the sector can move from reacting to AI to actively shaping how students learn alongside it. In June 2025, Australian education ministers endorsed the 2024 review of the Australian Framework for Generative AI in Schools – a national framework developed to guide the responsible and ethical use of AI tools across all school sectors. The policy architecture is in place. The gap that remains is between the framework and the staffroom. Evans sees AI as the catalyst for a deeper transformation that educators driving culture change have been pushing for years.
“We’re not in an industrial era anymore,” she says. “AI has just kind of been this catalyst to really shake people up about it.”
For Lambert, the outlook hinges on whether curriculum and assessment systems can catch up with the reform agenda schools are being asked to deliver. Governments are commissioning work at scale – his consultancy is currently active across three Australian states and multiple international projects – but the pace of classroom change remains slow. He is optimistic, though cautious. Progress requires more than good policy; it requires someone who understands what teachers actually need to hear and why.
Across the sector, the TALIS 2024 data points to a clear priority: supportive leadership, collegial trust, and reduced administrative burden are the conditions most closely linked to teacher wellbeing and retention. Schools that can build that kind of culture will be better placed to retain the workforce needed to deliver any reform. The most influential educators in Australia understand, collectively, that you cannot transform student learning without first supporting the teachers who deliver it.
The 2026 Most Influential Educators list spans 41 individuals across Australia – classroom teachers and system leaders, practitioners and researchers, principals and entrepreneurs. What they share is not a job title or a reach metric but a way of working: close to the evidence, close to the people, and honest about the gap between what Australian education aspires to be and what it currently delivers. Together, they represent the breadth of how culture change and reform actually happen – not all at once and not from the top down, but through thousands of moments of trust, teaching and persistence.
As Donovan of AERO puts it, the most important enabler of change is coherence: aligning curriculum, professional learning, and resources with practice so that evidence-based teaching becomes the default, not the exception. That coherence does not come from policy alone. It comes from people – the best educators in Australia, in classrooms and boardrooms alike – who are willing to do the hard work of making it stick.
Who are the best educators in Australia
influencing culture and reform?
The Educator’s 2026 Most Influential Educators list names 41 Australian education professionals driving school culture change and curriculum reform. They range from classroom teachers with deep daily influence over students to system-level leaders shaping policy and practice across hundreds of schools. Among those featured this year are Phil Lambert, founder of Phil Lambert Consulting (PLC), whose work spans national curriculum development and international education reform; and Melissa Evans, co-founder of The EduShift Collective, who works directly alongside teachers to build the confidence and skills to change. The full list spans all school sectors and states.
Why is teacher retention a critical issue
in Australian education right now?
The OECD’s TALIS 2024 found that Australian lower secondary teachers work an average of 46.5 hours per week – the third longest working week in the OECD – and that 34% experience high stress ‘a lot’, nearly double the OECD average of 19%. A 2024 Australian Education Union (AEU) survey found 83% of schools were experiencing teacher shortages. Randstad’s 2026 Workmonitor research, The Great Workforce Adaptation, adds that 42% of educators have left a school due to a lack of trust in their leadership team, pointing to a retention challenge that is fundamentally about culture and leadership, not compensation alone.
What separates meaningful AI integration
in schools from surface-level adoption?
According to TALIS 2024, 66% of Australia’s lower secondary teachers already use AI, ranking Australia fourth in the OECD. But 87% of those teachers flag AI enabling academic misrepresentation as their primary concern, and 75% of non-users cite a lack of skills and knowledge to begin. Melissa Evans of The EduShift Collective argues that meaningful integration starts by grounding AI use in the human capabilities students most need – critical thinking, collaboration and discernment – rather than adopting tools for their own sake. Schools still debating whether to ban AI, she argues, are already behind.
What is the gap between curriculum policy and
classroom practice in Australia?
Phil Lambert, founder of Phil Lambert Consulting (PLC) in Sydney, describes a persistent disconnect between the competencies governments want schools to develop – collaboration, resilience and digital literacy – and the traditional curricula most Australian students actually experience. Lambert’s work, including a UNESCO review of climate change education globally, found this pattern repeated across countries worldwide. AERO’s Learning Partner project, which has supported 53 schools across four states, is actively working to close this gap by helping schools embed evidence-based teaching practices sustainably.
What does influential teaching look like in 2026?
According to Jenny Donovan, chief executive officer of the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), a truly influential educator is one who can put evidence into practice and make it stick – resisting trend-driven swings in favour of sustained, evidence-based improvement. TALIS 2024 confirms that supportive leadership, collegial trust, and opportunities for professional collaboration are the conditions most predictive of teacher wellbeing and retention, making cultural leadership itself a form of educational reform. Influence, as this year’s list demonstrates, operates at every level: from a single classroom relationship to system-wide curriculum change.
What is the Australian Boarding Schools Association,
and why does it support this report?
The Australian Boarding Schools Association (ABSA) is the peak body representing boarding schools across Australia. As the proud supporting partner of TE’s Most Influential Educators 2026 report, ABSA reflects its commitment to recognising and advancing excellence in Australian education leadership.
The Educator’s research team received nominations for the sixth annual Most Influential Educators list from 2 to 27 March. Prospective candidates were sought based on the following criteria: education leaders, including but not limited to founders and administrators of a school or program, changemakers who have made an impact on many students and school communities in Australia in the face of adversity, award-winning educators and leaders who have been recognised for their contributions to the Australian education industry, and educators who have demonstrated innovation and creativity that is driving the education industry forward.
The research team obtained details of the nominees’ achievements and contributions to the profession. The nominees were evaluated based on the overall impact of their contributions. The final list consisted of 41 educators and other professionals who delivered specific outcomes that significantly influenced the Australian education industry.
The Most Influential Educators report is proudly supported by the Australian Boarding Schools Association (ABSA).
