With a career spanning more than 34 years, Pat Murphy is an influential educator with a reputation for re-culturing schools around a clear, dynamic vision, and always putting students first.
That innovative streak saw him lead Ashgrove State School into becoming one of Queensland's first Independent Public Schools, tailoring curriculum to students' real needs.
In 2022, Murphy was elected president of the Australian Government Primary Principals Association (AGPPA), representing more than 7,000 school leaders nationwide, a role he held alongside the presidency of the Queensland Association of State School Principals. He also sits on the board of the Australian Primary Principals Association (APPA), where he steers the body’s national direction, represents principals from across the country, and makes sure the politicians in Canberra actually listen to schools.
On Monday 27 July, Murphy’s career reached another milestone when he took up the role of Chief Executive Officer of Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA) Victorian Schools Ltd. As CEO, he will be responsible for leading 7 schools that educate a combined 12,000 students.
Fixing a funding formula years in the making
Reflecting on his tenure at AGPPA, Murphy said a particular moment of pride was helping stop a funding loophole that shortchanged students.
“One of the best things we were able to influence was to prevent the four percent the states were allowed to write off in the Gonski funding per state per student,” Murphy told The Educator.
“The states were writing that money off as depreciation or for transporting students to school, it was ridiculous as it had no impact on student learning as an organisation we pushed hard for it to be taken that out of future agreements.”
Murphy said another highlight was watching a long-fought funding battle finally pay off for the Territory.
“The fact that the Northern Territory signed up to Gonski considering they had such a low percentage of SRS being funded was a terrific win for schools and students in the Northern territory because at the time, NT didn’t have capacity to raise the funding required to deliver 100% of SRS, being such a small population state,” he said.
“The fact AGPPA and other organisation were able to we were able to work the Commonwealth to build funding to 100% of SRS is something I look back on with pride.”
Murphy said the next challenge is making sure the money outlined in the BFSA will go to schools and not be given away in cash bonuses to parents as cost-of-living relief.
“We know by the research that money must find its way in through the school gate if we are to make a difference to student learning outcomes,” he said.
“This money can’t be tied up in bureaucracy, that will not enhance one child’s outcomes. We have seen that with the first states reaching 100% of the SRS money has not flowed to schools.”
Murphy said Australia’s primary schools are not seeing that money.
“We know a rising tide lifts every boat so that’s why it’s so important that the money does find its way into government primary schools in every corner of the country,” he said.
“With the review of the SRS to take place we need to ensure that loadings do look after disadvantaged communities as was part of the original Gonski architecture but in addition ensure that funding is given to primary schools.”
Murphy said the stakes of getting primary literacy and numeracy right couldn't be clearer.
“As a country we know we must lift literacy and numeracy outcomes, so that when students reach high school, they can thrive,” he said. “High School principals can tell looking at their year seven students that many are already on a non-ATAR pathway.”
Murphy pointed to the importance of young people having choice, adding that to deliver that choice, every student needs the fundamentals of learning.
“The real challenge for Australia’s education bureaucrats is how to invert the current funding as primary schools are currently funded at $3,724 per student less than a secondary student,” he said.
“In high performing educational jurisdictions this funding is reversed with more spent on primary school than secondary education.”
Murphy said every schooling system needs to be “strong and robust”, so parents don’t feel they need to change systems for their children because one appears better.
“Parents need to feel confident knowing that if they put their kids in a system, whether it’s public, independent or a catholic school they will receive a first-class education.”
Merging bureaucracies, minus the bureaucracy
The proposed Teaching and Learning Commission, set to merge ACARA, AITSL, AERO and Education Services Australia, is billed as a fix for that fragmentation. Murphy said the reform's success hinges on whether it delivers real coherence for schools.
“Our hope is that it will end the unnecessary duplication we’re seeing,” he said. “We need to make sure we get those organisations working hand in glove with one another and recognising that they’re working on behalf of the government for the students of Australia and their education.”
Murphy said the goal should be simplicity, not another layer of complexity.
“We’re better off having one body of knowledge, because when you’re looking at this from a teacher’s point of view, it doesn’t make sense to have four different websites all with good information for users,” he said. “What we need to look at is how all the research and data is aligned and accessible in one place.”
Murphy said the real test of the commission's worth lies in the results it delivers.
“Ultimately, it is about working for the kids of Australia so that the next generation will be better educated than the last,” he said. “The critical element is, what will be different as a result of the commission and how ambitious will our targets be as a country?”
A recurrent issue in education is that bureaucracy has a habit of confusing motion with momentum, and this reform is no exception, says Murphy.
“Too often we have bureaucracies that muddy the waters,” he said. “The target needs to be teaching and learning outcomes of our young people not the number of schools or systems that have implemented a program.”
Murphy said the focus should be on measuring attendance rates rather than just policy.
“A couple of states have abstained as to supporting the Teaching and learning commission, we need all states and every side of politics working in the national interest ensuring we are all working for the kids of Australia,” he said.
“High performing countries have education as bipartisan, we would hope that this extends into forgetting about state borders, and recognise we’re here for the good of the kids.”
Why good leaders are walking away
Australia ranks among the OECD's worst for teacher shortages, with 41.9% of principals citing gaps that hurt instruction and a reported shortfall of 2,600 teachers across Victoria and NSW alone. But while vacancy numbers ease in places like NSW, Murphy argues the real crisis isn't a lack of teachers filling classrooms, it's a lack of experience filling the principal's office.
“What we’re not seeing are huge numbers of vacancies that are unfilled,” he said. “The issue, I think, isn’t that we have vacancies in leadership, but that we are putting inexperienced leaders in positions that we wouldn’t have put them in 15 years ago.”
Murphy said a pertinent question schools should be asking is whether new leaders are set up to succeed, or set up to fail.
“When we do that as a system, we not only put ourselves at risk – we’re also putting those leaders at risk,” he said. “Have they been well grounded in leadership with strong understanding of relationships, leading communities, policy and leadership context or are we giving keys to 1,000-student school to a person who hasn’t been in a principal position before?”
Murphy said this is concerning because while inexperienced leaders might have good intentions, enhancing their skills through capacity building itself will never be enough.
The ever-present gap between what public school leaders and those in the Independent sector are paid is contributing to the leadership pipeline crisis, he said.
“In public education, we clearly need to pay our leaders more. Unfortunately, there is a big differentiation between what public and private school leaders are earning,” he said. “It’s not only about money but the private schools do pay significantly higher than public schools.”
Murphy said this is because principals’ salary structures are tied to that of teachers.
“We’re not seeing the pay be enough to retain our current leaders or attracting new ones into the system.”
What are we actually educating for?
For Murphy, the problem runs deeper than curriculum design, it's a question Australia has never properly answered: what is school actually for?
“Before we developed the National curriculum or the national testing program in Australia, we never sat down as a country and identified what it was we really wanted out of Australian schooling,” he said. “What do we have that we can’t lose? What is it that makes Australians employable around the world?”
Murphy said instead of doing this, Australia’s education system copied what other countries did.
“We tend to only do adapt and adopt things when we have a crisis, or when there is a short-term political announcement,” he said.
“We must ask, what is the purpose of Australian schooling, and what do we want the students to leave school with? What are the outcomes we’re chasing in terms of secondary education? How do we ensure Australian educated students have a pathway into universities and TAFE?”
Murphy said it makes little sense as to why Australia, as a wealthy and resource rich nation, continues importing skilled workers from abroad.
“We should be educating Australians for those rather than sourcing them from developing countries,” he said. “”What is it that has stopped that pipeline coming through Australia’s education system? It’s certainly not the number of students. So, there’s clearly something wrong with the system.”
It's a design flaw Murphy believes has quietly shaped a generation of schooling: a curriculum built for high schools, then stretched to fit classrooms it was never designed for.
“Unfortunately, we developed the Australian curriculum on a high school model, but primary doesn’t work that way,” he said. “The National Curriculum goes from Foundation to year 10. The majority of it is taught in primary schools yet we developed a high school model.”
Murphy said the Curriculum should have started with a real focus on literacy and numeracy and general learning.
“Fortunately, the new CEO at ACARA Stephen Gniel has a primary background and is doing some great work revisiting the maths curriculum,” he said. “We hope this is successful so ACARA could make further changes in other subjects.”
Murphy said primary education could benefit from an amalgamation of subjects into general capabilities to declutter the curriculum, making it easier to teach and instil a love of learning in students.
“This would go a long way to ensure teachers enjoy teaching again, and the kids will want to come to school,” he said.
“Since the beginning of the Australian curriculum, we’ve seen a decline in attendance, so we need to make our curriculum more engaging and more relevant for the kids of today and we haven’t done that.”