HIGH EXPECTATIONS: THE PURPOSE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION – PRUE CAR

The Hon Prue Car is the Deputy Premier of New South Wales and Minister for Education and Early Learning. She is also the Minister responsible for Western Sydney. In a comprehensive speech to The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 22 July 2026, Prue Car outlined the significant changes to public education under the Minns Government. Founded by Premier Henry Parkes in the late nineteenth century, public education in NSW has, from the outset, had excellence of method and results as its guiding expectation. Minister Car argued that the Minns Government had restored that expectation in changes that have been made since coming to office.

HIGH EXPECTATIONS: THE PURPOSE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

PRUE CAR

It is a privilege to be here. I often argue that I have the best job in Government. It is certainly one of the most privileged positions.

Here in NSW, we are responsible for one of the largest education systems anywhere in the world. But also – for one of the oldest continuous public education systems in the world. And it did not endure by accident.

The success of the system is due to the idea on which it was founded. An idea that Henry Parkes enshrined in the Public Schools Act in 1866. The idea that the provision of public education wasn’t just about simply providing any education, it was about providing an education of the highest possible quality. An education built on high expectations.

And that is the idea which I want to speak about tonight. It is that principle that has driven the Minns Labor Government’s work to rebuild public education in NSW.

Public education in NSW

While the existence of public education in NSW now commands overwhelming support – its creation did not. Parkes faced fierce opposition from those who believed government had no role in education. As he put it, there were “men of very considerable influence who maintained that the Government should not interfere in the work of education and that education ought to be left exclusively to individual exertion.”

Fortunately for public education, Parkes relished a fight. He was a dominant and determined force who towered over the politics of his day. A lion of the arena. His opponents described him as being vain, egotistical and craving recognition. Which was unsurprisingly because Parkes knew how to make enemies. He called his opponents speeches “turgid flows of dull nonsense” and described one rival as having “a strangely shaped head which a monkey would disown”.

While his politics could be combative, Parkes’ is purpose never wavered. He possessed extraordinary clarity about what public education should be. By 1866, New South Wales had already established government schools. Although limited in supply, the colony was already “in advance of the mother country”.

Britain may have been the “pioneer of liberty”, but it was not at the forefront of “educating the people.” Parkes believed the colony could go further. Not merely to educate more children but to educate them well. He said, “If government were to take on the great duty and responsibility of educating the children of the country,” it must “teach as many children as possible and provide education as high as it can possibly be raised.”

For Parkes, expanding access should not come at the expense of quality. For him, it was “wrong, nay, positively sinful” to leave children without an education, but equally as wrong to compromise its quality.

Throughout his career, Parkes was relentless in demanding higher standards in public education. Parkes believed governments should never stop striving for a better education system. The standard could always be higher. And that is the ambition that should continue to drive us today.

Governments’ responsibility is not merely to open the school gates. It is to ensure what lies beyond them is excellent. Excellence in every public school, for every student. Not as an aspiration – but as the standard.

Framing education

Too often we have allowed others to frame public education as something else. Whether it is well-intentioned advocates, whose persistent focus on what is wrong with public education only reinforces damaging stereotypes – which inadvertently – comes at the expense of teachers, students and families. Or whether it is those who have never set foot in the classroom or read the curriculum but persist with making outrageous and unfounded claims about so-called wokeness.

Indeed, I have heard of more credible sitings of the Blue Mountains Panther in my electorate … than any evidence of teachers putting out kitty litter trays for cat-identifying students. Public education deserves to be known for the excellence it delivers. Not the hyperbole, not the stereotypes and not the myths.

Explicit teaching / curriculum

Pursuing excellence begins with evidence. And the evidence overwhelmingly supports explicit teaching. That is why our government moved beyond simply encouraging explicit teaching to mandating it across every public school. We have deliberately embedded explicit teaching into the heart of our curriculum. No longer allowing schools to choose their own adventure … or sending students on a journey of self-discovery.

It is about what the best teachers have always done. Explaining new concepts clearly. Checking for understanding. Providing timely feedback. It is about teachers using their expert practice to give every student the strongest possible foundation for learning … on which all other knowledge is built.

Explicit teaching also requires a curriculum worth teaching. I acknowledge the former government began work on reforming the NSW curriculum. Our government’s job has been focused on implementing it successfully and consistently in the classroom, so every teacher is supported and every student benefits. We are delivering a knowledge-rich curriculum that is clear, coherent and carefully sequenced That systematically gives every student access to the same powerful knowledge.

Every child deserves more than a strong foundation. But they also deserve the opportunity to build on it. To grow, to be challenged, and to reach their full potential. That is how every child can pursue excellence. Whether their passion is in mathematics or science… In the arts, in leadership or in sport.

We reject the idea that excellence only belongs in certain settings. Every public school should be a place where talent is recognised and nurtured. That is why we developed our Inspire program. Where we have embedded high potential and gifted education across every public school and provided more opportunities for students.

We have backed it with targeted professional learning for teachers in gifted education. And a massive investment in infrastructure upgrades to specialist learning facilities like science labs, performance spaces and technology workshops.

Behaviour

None of this is possible without classrooms that are calm, respectful and focused on learning. Because excellence depends not only on what we teach, but the environment in which we teach it. And just as we have high expectations for learning… We also have high expectations for behaviour.

One of the first decisions we made as a government was to put in place a stronger behaviour and suspensions policy. It replaced what was – frankly – a disastrous and unworkable policy of the former government. Teachers and principals told us that they were disempowered to respond to persistent misbehaviour And that they had been stripped of authority to suspend consistently disruptive students.

We – unapologetically – restored that authority to principals. Yes – suspensions and expulsions should be a last resort. But we cannot allow situations where entire classrooms of students bear the consequences of a single, disruptive student. Every child has the right to learn in a safe environment and every teacher has the right to teach in one.

Now we did this with the understanding that the number of suspensions would probably increase. We do not apologise for that and it should not be taken as a decline in school culture. It should be recognised as evidence that schools are acting. That expectations are being enforced, standards are being upheld, and classrooms are being protected.

Alongside this we have introduced a stronger Student Behaviour Code of Conduct that clearly sets out the behaviours we expect in every public school. Reinforcing respect, responsibility and safety. As part of this – for the first time – students and families will be asked, every year, to acknowledge the behaviours expected of them. Because high expectations should not stop at the curriculum. They should extend to every part of school life.

High expectations for learning.
High expectations for behaviour.
High expectations for every student.
High expectations set from the system.
Lost decade of opportunity

Parkes understood that public education succeeds when it acts as a system and is “not just left to chance”. However, in the 2010s, NSW moved away from that idea. I would argue it was indeed a wasted decade of opportunity for NSW students. In large part – due to the former government’s “Local Schools, Local Decisions” policy which undermined Public Education’s strength as a system.

The premise was that giving schools greater autonomy and greater flexibility would lead to better decisions, better teaching and improved outcomes. In practice, it ripped away sensible, efficient support. It made schools fend for themselves, often pitting principals against each other for staff. But worst of all – student outcomes suffered. NAPLAN results did not improve and HSC outcomes declined.

A system of our size should have been able to guarantee HSC subject selection to students no matter where they attend. Shamefully, it could not. Three years later, that is exactly what our government is guaranteeing – for all 11 of the most aspirational HSC subjects.

Local Schools Local Decisions devolved responsibility without any accountability. No consistent targets or measures of success. Schools were not even asked to demonstrate how their decisions improved student outcomes. Local Schools Local Decisions was simply an unmitigated failure. A failure of political philosophy foisted upon schools absent of any evidence It had simply abandoned the vision of public education as a strong, coherent, evidence-based system.

Teaching profession

As Parkes had said – public education was never meant to be left to chance. He argued it “was not enough to supply good teachers and good school houses” – the system needed to be one that enforced standards. Parkes insisted that no man or woman “from the Prime Minister down – will be able to get a boy or girl made a teacher unless he or she is qualified for the calling.”

Men and women may be accomplished scholars and yet utterly unfit to teach little children. Parkes always made the forceful case that teaching is a profession, with its own knowledge, skills and expertise. And that it deserved to be valued and respected as such. Unfortunately for 12 years, this proposition was undermined.

The suppression of teachers’ wages by the former government sent an awful message that the teaching profession wasn’t valued. And, predictably, it led to record teacher vacancies with 10,000 merged and cancelled classes every single day, compromising hundreds of thousands of hours of learning for children which they’ll never get back.

As Parkes said there is no “good school anywhere without a good teacher”. There is no way you can lift student outcomes or improve foundational literacy or numeracy skills without teachers. That is why our government abolished the wages cap and delivered the biggest uplift in the teachers wages in a generation.

As a result of that, we halved the number of merged and cancelled classes and reduced the number of teacher vacancies by 70 per cent. In doing so we have reinstated literally millions of hours of lost learning that students in NSW are entitled to.

Now our political opponents claimed, by doing this, we would blow the budget and bankrupt the state. Well, we have lifted wages and at the same time we have dramatically reduced expense growth. At the end of the day – governing is about priorities.

Public preschools

Today, we know far more about learning than we did a generation ago. We know learning does not begin at five years of age. We know children’s brains develop rapidly in the earliest years.

The evidence on this is overwhelming; access to high-quality early childhood education can change the trajectory of young lives. It provides the opportunity for early diagnosis and intervention. It prepares children for the transition to primary school in the best possible way. That is why we are delivering the largest expansion of public preschools in the history of NSW – 100 new public preschools, located where the need is greatest.

We know that children experiencing disadvantage have the most to gain from high-quality early childhood education. Yet the cruel irony is that they are often the least likely to access it. Not because these families don’t want to access these services. It is because these services have been put out of reach – be it by distance or by cost. This historic investment is about ensuring that the children who stand to benefit the most from quality early childhood education are not the ones left behind.

Governments that are serious about excellence cannot wait until children fall behind. It has to start from the very beginning. It has to be built early. That is why I believe expanding public early childhood education is one of the most important reforms of the Minns Labor Government.

Conclusion

Excellence is not a single reform or a single policy. It is the product of setting high expectations at every stage of a child’s education. Of having a sensible, evidence-based system of teaching and learning, at all levels. That is the right of every student in NSW.

We are determined to enshrine public education as the benchmark of educational excellence. To be unapologetic about setting high expectations. Public education should be defined by excellence. It should be recognised for excellence. And it should never apologise for pursuing excellence.

Excellence is not determined by a child’s postcode, their parents’ income or their background. Excellence is never an accident. It is the product of deliberate choices of governments that refuse to leave children’s futures to chance. That is the promise of public education. And we intend to keep it.