3 December 2025

In the final episode of Teach for 2025, Chief Executive Martin Westwell reflects on the many achievements made across the Department for Education this year. Professor Westwell shares stories from his visits to schools and preschools and discusses big projects such as the rollout of EdChat to all secondary students and preparing for the start of 3-year-old preschool in 2026. He also highlights how sites are working towards the same goal, but in ways that suit their community. Looking ahead to 2026, Professor Westwell encourages educators to continue working on what’s important for their community, maintain their focus on learning, and actively share their good ideas with one another.

Show Notes

Transcript

Dale Atkinson: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name's Dale Atkinson from South Australia's Department for Education. And today, we don't normally timestamp these because we want them to be relevant whenever you might listen, but, this is a retrospective look back at 2025, and a look ahead at 2026 with our chief executive, Martin Westwell. Welcome.

Martin Westwell: Thanks Dale.

Dale Atkinson: So, 2025 key moments? Key reflections on what the year was like? What have you got?

Martin Westwell: It's been quite a year. Look this year I think has been a real kind of year when we've really got into that notion of the kind of the tight and flexible. And what I mean by that is where, you know, you can see so many of our sites, schools, and preschools kind of taking on that notion that, there's agency there, there's an empowerment there to really think about what's needed in this site, within the bounds of the strategy, those areas of impact. But really saying, okay, great – let's step into this. So when I go to schools and preschools, what I see is this diversity of responses, what's going on in school, what's going on in classrooms, but all broadly in the same direction - the direction of the strategy.

One of the moments for me was going up to the APY Lands and going to Fregon and seeing there how Principal Sara sat down with community and talked about the strategy, public education - but what does that mean for us? And their site's learning plan is an artwork. It's literally an artwork. It's a painting, that the governing council have done. And the core idea, the piece in the middle symbolises ‘tjungu, which is ‘together’. So it's community and school together. It's the Anangu and the pirinpa, the white teachers, together - working together for their students. And they've got a number of things in that, that come from the strategy; but are their representation of the strategy.

One of the ones that I really love is this notion of the spear. They want the children to be like spears - straight and true, and so that's part of what it looks like in the school. And then of course what's happened is with Sara and perhaps then Sara, the principal, taking a bit more of an ownership of, okay, so what does that look like in terms of planning? What are we going for? Still phonics, it's still, you know, the work of schools - but really honouring what's going on with the governing council and what that community's looking for.

And that's just one example, but it is, I think a really good example of what we we’re really going for. To say, well, this is what we're looking for as a system, but you can take ownership of this as a community and a school. And that's exactly what's gone on there, and it's not templated, it's an artwork!

I’ve been to other places as well where they've not got it written down in a document because it's on the wall, you know, and it's not in the staff room, it's out in the reception! So everybody can see it, everybody's having conversations about it, all still in the same direction. So I think that's been almost kind of the characteristic of this year, that shift that's occurred.

Dale Atkinson: We met the other night, you gave a presentation to a group of parents, about 120 of them, on school finance and some of the decisions that are being made. You spoke a little bit there about the theory of change within a big system like ours in Education. Can you describe what the right approach is? And I think it connects back to what you were talking about there in terms of, you know, how that community has worked in their space.

Martin Westwell: Yeah. Look, I shared the story then about Jim Watterston – Jim, a really respected and experienced education leader, has led education systems in Australia, most recently was the Dean of the Graduate School of Education in Melbourne. And I happened to go to a conference in Melbourne that was the week before Jim’s retirement. He did a talk, and he showed this slide and it was a triangle and he said, “I used to think this is how change happened” - and the triangle’s got like the peak at the top, it's like, you know, chief executive or secretary of the department at the top, and then that flows through to you know, maybe the regional directors or whatever the system's got, and then to principals and then to communities and teachers. And he said, “Hmm, that might be how you can get people to do something, but it's not really our change happens”. And he said, “this is how change happens!” and he showed the same triangle the other way up. That sustainable change happens when it comes from the community, when it comes from the students, the teachers, the principals, the community and the job really of the system then, is to get the right settings in place and the right supports in place.

And of course, it's a bit of both. You know, there is something for the system to try and define, not over define, but try and define – kind of, this is where we're going, 'cause you've gotta have some focus, you've gotta make some choices. I mean, that's what strategy is right? You’ve gotta make some choices. But you also know that there's choices that have to be made at a local level. And so while things in education, you know, we do have fads and they come and go, and that's really in my mind because we get people to do a thing and then we say, “oh, stop doing that. Do this other thing.” Or even worse, we say, “carry on doing that, and do these extra 10 things on top”. Whereas, if you look at it from the other point of view where you're saying, okay, what do we want to do? Not so much what are you going to be accountable for, but start with what do you want to take responsibility for with your community and doing this thing together.

And then I think people, I mean, I think we've seen it lots and lots of examples of it across our system. People get activated - you're activating your teachers, you're activating community. We've seen some great examples of how students have been activated in that process as well. I think that's how you get sustainable change and then I think we can really see that getting going now in our system.

Dale Atkinson: So someone like Jim in a 40 year career, was still learning right to the very end. You're obviously, you know, three, four years in your tenure. What have you learned in that time?

Martin Westwell: Oh, so much. You know, we've been doing the Chief Executive student forums - so hundreds, thousands of kids across the state have been involved in that, working together – and the focus this year has been on ‘performance mode’ and ‘learning mode’. So the idea that you know, so very briefly - if you’re practicing your musical instrument, you're in ‘learning mode’ - when you want feedback, you want someone to say to you, “oh, it'd be better if” or “have you tried that”, or mistakes are opportunities to learn. When you're in ‘performance mode’ - mistakes are not necessarily opportunities to learn. They don't feel like opportunities to learn. They feel like you've not done this quite right. Feedback is just heckling, you know, so there's this, and sometimes school, I think, can feel like for students that we're almost always in ‘performance mode’. So we put this idea out there, and of course students have grappled with it in lots of different ways; and then we've got the sense of that feedback.

And I was in a school just last week actually, one of the students said “we've stopped applauding the Acknowledgement of Country”…okay, tell me about that! And they said, “'cause it's not a performance, so we shouldn't applaud it. It's more serious than that. It's learning. It's a reflection and every time you talk about it, it's not a performance, it should be part of our learning.” And so they had worked with the staff and the school in assemblies to stop people applauding the Acknowledgement Country because it's not a performance. And I talked to the community about that. And just that day, they tried at three assemblies and it, people are still applauding, and then this third one and there was no applause that there were very pleased that there was no applause.

So, you know, I know that's a little thing, but those little things all add up to a big thing. And just learning and listening about how that's happened; I think has been really profound.

Some bigger things as well - learning from the schools that have been really delving into the expeditionary learning. Some of the schools have really, really embraced CREW as a proper cultural change, you know, really working on that notion of students not being passengers on this ship - they're the crew, they're making it work. And some of the schools that have really embraced that with staff and students - I think there's so much we can learn from them too.

Dale Atkinson: Now as a system, you know, any period of time you never get away without big system reforms going on. And the big system reform that we have kind of been working on is the rollout of 3-year-old preschool, which will start in 2026.
How's that going? What's the vision? Why?

Martin Westwell: Yeah. Look, I think there's a number of drivers and the two drivers really of course are child development and for the state, there's also a kind of an economic participation of women. And of course there's the Education Department - the piece that we're focused on particularly is the child development and the learning of kids - and there's so many benefits for that, to that. But one of the things for me that is important is that notion of learning to stop and think; the self-regulation.

It strikes me that, you know, this has been something that I've, has been part of my career in lots of different ways – SACE Board, my academic career before that. Actually, you know, oh gosh, now it's a long time ago now, kind of looked at all of the research around the cognitive neuroscience of learning and said, well, “what's the thing that would have the biggest difference? You know, what would you really want to focus on?” - that was probably 25 years ago now - and that the development of that self-regulation, the ability to stop and think then, for me, was quite obviously the thing that would make the biggest difference to individual students and to communities. And I think 3-year-old preschool, the promise of that is enormous through 3-year-old preschool. I think that if we can; and making sure that we realise that actually is the work. That doesn't feel like the work, 'cause the work feels like “how do you get the sites ready? And how did you do this and how did you do that?” Of course it is. And you could do all that, and miss, if you're not careful, you could do all that and then miss the big point about, about you know, the child development point.

And yes, there's some other things, some other social, emotional learning in that, of course. There's the underpinnings of the knowledge, skills, cognition, dispositions towards literacy and numeracy. You know, all of those things come too. But I do think that this notion of self-regulation is the biggest one. So yep, the pragmatic logistics of doing this thing is gonna be a challenge – but let's not lose sight of the big picture.

Dale Atkinson: Another big picture item really is around; we made the brave decision when AI and the model started to kind of emerge to embrace that, take that on. And we've rolled out over the last 18 months our own EdChat platform. What are we getting out of that? And what are the benefits that we're starting to see from that early adoption?

Martin Westwell: I think there's a bunch of things. I think there's something about putting this notion of, kind of you know, AI is like this flawed, expert - knows stuff, but you know, but let's just be a bit critical in the thinking and have some, be judicious in how we use the information that comes from it. Putting that in the hands of students, I think, is really interesting. It has got a chance to support students in a way that improves equity in our system, 'cause not everybody has access to that expert, other than perhaps their teacher. Some people have that at home, others don't and so, I do see it as potentially as a significant equity measure.

For teachers - you know, we've seen already through the work around curriculum and how it might help with planning, how it might help with, you know - so I've got this resource, I've been using this for a while, I really like it, I think it's really good, kids respond well and learn from it - how might I adapt this for students who, you know, might have some challenges, or I've got students in my class who are particularly interested in this, or I've got a student in my class who I find it really hard to stretch - how could I adapt this resource - just to give you some ideas as a teacher. So, it's not about offloading the hard thinking. In fact, I think AI's done best when it helps you to do even harder thinking yourself, right? So, giving you some suggestions and making you think about, well, what would actually make the biggest difference for students. So I think we can see it in student use today. I think we can see it in teacher use today.

I think the benefit of being an early adopter has been that we've been at the front of this, and we've actually been able to set the tone for Australia in terms of being a learning system. So, the conversation about AI was in danger of becoming about, oh, students cheating using AI; you know, and there's a bit of that, and we're grappling with that; and I know the SACE Board are doing some great work around that as well. You know, so oh it's about cheating, or it would be about - are we going to use it or not? And we've been able to frame the conversation about, it's not whether students are using it or not - it's whether they're using our thing or not - 'cause they're gonna be using it anyway. Once you take that position and you understand that position - that it's not an either or - it's a “this is happening, are we gonna step in and support our students or not” - it changes the conversation. And I think we've changed the conversation, nationally.

It's also allowed us to learn. I think, some of the work that we did early on where, you know, where we looked at students' prompts and they were analysed in terms of SOLO. So, on SOLO it’s normally used to look at students' responses - so you know, do students know one thing? Do they know a bag of things? You know, lots of bits and pieces of knowledge. Or do they understand how all these things fit together relationally to form a, you know, a bigger, interconnected idea? And you can see from the prompts that students are asking - whether they're asking for a response that is just one piece of information, multiple pieces of information, or actually helping them to form these interrelated questions - nobody else has ever seen that. The thinking that we can do… you know, one of those definitions of kind of creativity or invention, that notion of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought. We are in a position where we can think what no one else has thought because of the learning that we're doing and the stepping in that we're doing.

The last bit is thinking about the future. So we're now, what we're in is thinking about; how do we do what we're doing a bit better, with some improvements, right now using AI. If we stayed there, that'd be okay - it's not really the question though. The question is - what should this thing look like in the future? What could education look like in the future when AI is in place. And the world is going to change more and more because AI is in place - how does education need to respond? And I think South Australia is positioned now to be able not only to respond to that, but actually to be able to lead that response for Australia and beyond.

Dale Atkinson: I think one of the things we've seen from the early adoption, from the educators out in the field, is just how adept they are at solving for some of the problems – well, identifying them first and then solving for them. We had a presentation from one of our educators, another one of the parent forums, where he spoke about that issue of cheating and the license that he'd discussed with his kids around what they can and can't do to develop a stoplight system. And we're seeing so many of those innovative solutions that are coming through. What else have you seen out there in the field?

Martin Westwell: Look, I think that's right - and that's such a good example, right, of a system that's put some settings in place. You've got people innovating in their sites, in really sophisticated ways. Because that traffic light stuff, you could look at it and go, oh well, it's just an indication of whether you can or can't or, can I can't I, use AI for this assignment, or whatever. That example that you gave, what you can see underneath it, you could see in that presentation was - it was helping the students to understand when they should and shouldn't - you know, in their lives and in you know, building their metacognition to understand, you know, when this tool’s gonna be useful for me and when it's gonna give me an answer that's gonna usurp my thinking, you know, and it's, and it's not necessary. So it's a really good example of how that's emerged.

I do think that some of the things around, you know, going back to the student culture work - Port Lincoln High School has probably been the, one of the leaders on this. And what you can see there is that change in the culture, that activating of students, which was just, you know, put out there as a suggestion - Craig, the principal, said, I think my staff are in the right place for this, I think my school's in the right place for this. I think we could do something. Started out gently, tried some things, got good responses. And now, you know, the culture in that school, I think has, especially amongst the students, has really changed and they've seen improved attendance, fewer behavioural issues - you know, it's really changing the school.

Now what, what would be terrible would be if we said, okay so that's a program now, and we're gonna replicate that in every school. Because every school’s not, might not be ready for it. You know, what's going on with the staff, what's going on with the community - it might not be their thing. So now, instead of doing it from the top down and going, okay, so we've seen this thing, it works, we're gonna scale it, you know, that's the kind of standard thing. Saying, okay, well here's the thing - it's been successful, it's been successful for these reasons. We've got some understanding of what would have to be true for this thing to be successful. Let's share that with people who think that they're ready for that and that might be something for them.

It's more of a professional learning and development of the system through sharing rather than through a kind of top-down approach, and I think we're just stepping into that. Next year, you know, more networks of intentionally connecting people together who can learn from each other, and yes, we might get some external expertise in there, but I think we underestimate the expertise, the potential for innovation within our system.

Dale Atkinson: What message would you like to share with the educators on their accomplishments and achievements of 2025?

Martin Westwell: The first thing I'd want to say is, thanks for stepping in.

The approach that we're taking doesn't provide, you know, the step-by-step clarity that other approaches provide. And I know that school leaders and sites have tried, have worked really hard and a great job of saying, well you know that's the strategy and there's a lot in it - but our piece is just going to be this piece, so kind of reducing that down to say this is what we're focusing on in our site. But there still has been a little bit of ambiguity, and people have been, you know, really rolling with that - sometimes in positive ways, sometimes you find it a bit difficult to grapple with that. So first thing is kind of thanks for stepping in. And the other bit is to say - we're not rushing with this. So time is gonna be a big part of this for us to grapple with getting comfortable with it and what was working, so, you know, take the time as well to do that.

I think what we also recognise is that schools are complex places and probably getting more complex. And children, young people of course, you know - like anyone are pretty complex. But young people are probably getting more and more complex - all kinds of influences that weren't there in the past. You know, you kind of chuck COVID in there and see the COVID generation coming through now. I think teaching is more complex than it's been in the past, so to recognise that, and again, to thank educators for the ways in which they're dealing with that. Often the persistence and resilience, as well as the kind of professional judgments that they're bringing to bear.

Dale Atkinson: What does 2026 look like and where should the focus be there?

Martin Westwell: The first, the most important thing is just to say - it's holding the line, steady as she goes, you know, not big changes. Recognise that what we're trying to do in South Australia is gonna take time to bed in. So, there's no rush to introduce, you know, the next thing and the next thing and the next thing - we're not doing that. Keep with the focus that you've got, develop that, mature that, keep that going.

There are some things, you know, so the South Australian Curriculum. There'll be a new draft of that to look at and grapple with, and I'm, you know, really proud of the work that we've done there to take the Australian Curriculum and really make it work for South Australia; really make it work for the strategy. And the way in which it's, you know, we've been working with educators; to say well give us some feedback 'cause we really want this to work for you and for our students.

Curriculum at its worst, if it becomes a, you know too much of a syllabus, and too, you end up with students and teachers serving the syllabus rather than curriculum being a tool that helps teachers to serve the students and the learning needs of the students. So, you know, certainly see the curriculum in that way. And again, we're introducing a little bit of ambiguity around the dispositions and what they look like. But again, there's no rush to, you know, there's no curriculum police going “this and this and this, and this”. Find the thing in there that works for you and experiment with it and try things out, and, you know, some of the dispositions are about kind of resilience and those kinds of things - if you know that that's something for your students, you know, think about, you know, what would that look like for a lesson or for a period of time to think about - okay, yeah, I've got the content - but if I started with a disposition, how might this thing look differently? You know, so have some of those conversations with colleagues. It's not a kind of, implementation rollout - do this, do this, do this. It's a - alright, well here's an opportunity, what does this look like for you? How can we take this opportunity and, and make the most of it? And are we doing it right? Is it, have we framed it in the right way? Is it expressed in the right way, to be able to support you to do that?

So don't see it as a kind of compliance thing. I really want people to see it as an opportunity to activate themselves, their colleagues, and the students in their class. But all the while, you know, still… this is a direction, this is the strategy, this is the focus that we've got at our site, our school, our preschool - let's just keep going with that, 'cause that - I strongly believe that that is how we'll make the biggest difference for our students.

Dale Atkinson: Now we're just on the cusp of the end of term four. Almost time for family time. What does Christmas look like in the Westwell household?

Martin Westwell: It's gonna be a good one this year - we've got no visitors, we're not going anywhere, so it's gonna be a quiet one; which I am all for! So, you know, we've been here for, been here in South Australia for almost 20 years now, but we don't do the Pommy, you know, roast turkey or anything like that. It's for us, it's alright - what's your favourite food, what's your favourite food? Right. That's what we're having on Christmas Day. So it's gonna be a pretty, pretty relaxed affair at our house this year, and I'm very happy about that.

Dale Atkinson: That sounds nice. It sounds like you're fully assimilated, so it's good to hear. Martin Westwell, thank you very much for your time.

Martin Westwell: Thanks so much.