Agency is the Precondition for Improvement

By Andy Mison, President, ASPA

When ASPA brought public secondary school leaders from every state and territory to the National Gallery of Australia in March for our 2026 National Summit, we asked them to actively participate in the development of national policy. The Summit might be remembered for Minister Clare's announcement of Commonwealth funding for the reflective supervision pilot, a genuine win for principal wellbeing that ASPA pursued alongside APPA, ACEL, and Headspace. But the work delegates did in the room matters just as much, if not more.

We put three questions to the profession. What role should school leaders play in shaping education policy and reform? What would genuine co-design between school leaders and policymakers look like in practice? And what capabilities do school leaders need to contribute effectively to system reform? Throughout the Summit, we gathered 278 contributions, which we have now consolidated, analysed, and presented in this report: https://www.aspa.asn.au/2026-aspa-national-summit

The most consistent theme was that agency is the precondition for improvement. Delegates were precise about what they meant. Agency is the capacity to exercise professional judgement and to shape the decisions that affect your school. Authority is the formal grant of power to act in a defined domain. These are not the same thing, and our members know it from experience. The autonomy reforms of the past decade handed many leaders authority over budgets, staffing processes, and compliance, while their agency over teaching and learning, the work that actually moves outcomes, remained hemmed in by prescription and risk management. One delegate captured the sentiment of many:

“nobody knows students and their needs like the people who teach them, and policy that arrives as a rigid instrument rather than a tool for schools will not change what happens in classrooms.”

On co-design, delegates were equally clear that consultation after the fact does not qualify. Genuine co-design means practitioners in the room when problems are framed, not just when solutions are road-tested. That finding lands at a significant moment. The proposed Teaching and Learning Commission would consolidate ACARA, AITSL, AERO and ESA into a single national body, and ASPA's position has been consistent. We are open to the reform, and our support depends on practitioner co-design being built into the Commission's architecture from the start. The Summit findings give that position an evidence base drawn directly from the profession.

On capabilities, leaders did not ask for less accountability. They asked for the system to invest in them; in the time, structures and support to engage with reform without abandoning their schools to do it. That request aligns closely with what the international evidence shows works: centrally resourced capability-building wrapped around professional judgement.

So what happens with these findings now? They have shaped our submission and policy positions, with the agency and capability themes speaking directly to current, live institutional design questions. They inform more work to come on agency, authority, and the rebalancing our school systems need, which sets the Summit findings alongside the national and international evidence. And they will return to our working school leaders through our affiliated state and territory associations, so that the next round of advocacy is built on what we very democratically heard.

The Summit confirmed something I hear in every jurisdiction I visit. Secondary leaders are not resisting reform, and they are not defending a failed status quo. They are asking to be trusted with the work they are trained to do, and backed by systems that make that work possible.

Disclaimer: Andy is a non-executive Director of AITSL, and the views represented here are expressed on behalf of ASPA only.