Catherine Strohfeldt
Catherine Strohfeldt reports on how education policy, money and behaviour collide in Queensland classrooms and childcare services, with a focus on what government decisions mean for students, families and teachers day to day. She is an education reporter at Brisbane Times, covering schools, universities and early learning alongside related state policy. Her stories often start from a concrete setting – a single school, subject or provider – and use it to explain broader shifts in education funding, discipline and workforce conditions.
School discipline and student behaviour
Discipline and behaviour are a recurring thread in her schools coverage. In one piece on an inner-city state school, she reports on a sharp drop in suspension rates at that campus while suspensions climb elsewhere, using that contrast to explore how different approaches to behaviour management show up in the data and in school culture. She follows this with broader work on behaviour, such as a feature ranking “Brisbane’s best behaved schools” through the perspectives of parents, students and teachers, foregrounding how school communities themselves define good behaviour and classroom climate.
Across these stories she treats suspension statistics, survey responses and on-the-ground accounts as complementary ways to understand how discipline policy translates into everyday student experience.
Budgets, capacity and the education workforce
Strohfeldt consistently links educational opportunity to how much families and governments are asked to pay. In a piece asking “Is this the most expensive subject your child could pick?”, she drills into the fees, equipment and hidden costs attached to particular senior subjects, outlining how these choices strain household budgets and potentially steer students away from preferred pathways.
Coverage of a “$55m cash splash” for primary schools in Brisbane’s west then tracks how capital funding decisions increase enrolment capacity, allow schools to remove demountable classrooms and reshape catchment options for local families.
She follows the money further into the workforce, reporting on an interim pay rise for state school teachers and setting that outcome in the context of teacher marches, bargaining, and the pressures driving industrial action. Together, these stories show a reporter who treats fees, infrastructure spending and pay deals not as abstract numbers but as levers that change who can access which schools, and on what terms.
Childcare and early learning
Her beat extends into early childhood education and care, where she traces how financial shocks reverberate through families and staff.
In coverage of a childcare chain entering voluntary administration, she explains what the collapse means for parents relying on those centres, the future of affected workers, and the role of regulators and administrators in keeping services operating or winding them down. By setting business failure alongside the social function of childcare, she treats early learning as both a critical service and a vulnerable part of the education ecosystem.
Universities and tertiary education
Strohfeldt also reports on universities, particularly leadership and governance. In a story on a former student appointed as vice-chancellor of Griffith University, she highlights the significance of an alumnus returning to lead the institution and situates the appointment within broader debates about university direction and accountability.
Her higher education coverage complements her schools reporting, sketching a pipeline from school subjects and behaviour policies through to tertiary leadership and capacity.
Planning, government and environmental policy
Alongside education, she covers Queensland government, planning and environmental issues, often where policy decisions affect everyday infrastructure.
Topic coverage on Brisbane planning and development includes her reporting on a scheme to ease housing pressures and help young people into new homes, council debates over potential tolls to fund Story Bridge repairs, and local opposition to a 25‑storey residential tower planned on long‑standing tennis lawns. In Queensland government coverage she reports on battles to save a mental health hospital and questioning of the housing minister about whether a single mother on a modest income should fear eviction under new social housing eligibility settings. Environmental reporting such as the Bribie Island erosion review, which attributes accelerated coastal reshaping to human activity, shows a willingness to interrogate technical reports and government responses in detail.
These strands reinforce a broader interest in how planning, housing, health and environmental decisions made by ministers and councils reshape the communities her education stories return to.
Across this body of work, Strohfeldt’s reporting is defined by close attention to the practical consequences of policy – whether a subject becomes too expensive to take, a bridge toll is floated, or a childcare chain collapses – and by a consistent habit of anchoring those decisions in the experiences of students, parents and workers.
4 more education journalists.
Bridie Short
Bridie Short reports on how learning environments shape young people’s experiences and their engagement with wider issues. She writes about education for Lynn News, a local news publication with a focus on community stories. Her coverage centres on classrooms and other learning settings, with attention to the people and events that define daily life there. She has written about drama students paying homage to the climate emergency with a performance, framing their creative response as part of their educational experience and blending arts coverage with an education lens. Her education reporting sits within a broader community news agenda, linking school and college stories to general news. Her pieces are grounded in concrete events and activities, showing what students and staff are doing rather than focusing on abstract policy.
Charles Bliss
Charles Bliss is a features-led reporter at the Eastern Daily Press whose distinct focus is education told through human stories about schools, pupils and the adults who work with them. He writes about what it feels like to be in a classroom or school community, using specific events, characters and concrete activity to show how reading, creativity and wellbeing are encouraged in young people. His education coverage centres children and teachers rather than policy, turning visits, campaigns and workshops into narrative pieces with practical detail. He gives particular weight to wellbeing, mental health and sensory learning, linking health, psychology and horticulture through tangible examples. Alongside education he covers health, environment, behaviour, everyday guidance and local innovation, using plain explanation, step-by-step advice and narrative structure to show how people learn, adapt and look after each other in their communities.
Conor Duffy
Conor Duffy stands out for linking education policy to the daily lives of students, parents and teachers, treating the classroom as part of a wider social system. He is the ABC’s national education and parenting reporter. His beat spans schools, universities and family life. He covers education policy, test scores, rankings, funding, teacher workload, behaviour, school refusal, student wellbeing and parenting stress. He reports on NAPLAN, university rankings, the Job Ready Graduates legislation and the cost of humanities degrees. He also covers privacy and school data. His reporting combines hard data, policy detail and personal stories. He has also done foreign, environment and investigative work for the ABC, including as North America correspondent, and has worked across Lateline, 7.30 and AM.
Darcy Fitzgerald
Darcy Fitzgerald stands out for reporting the school system from inside the classroom outwards. He is a national education reporter within the News Corp Australia network, writing across The Advertiser, Herald Sun, Courier-Mail and Daily Telegraph. A former teacher, he covers schools and education with classroom dynamics in view, and he treats teachers, students and families as the starting point for stories. His beat includes school-related issues and trends across jurisdictions, school structures, academic results, shifts in schooling models, and the practical costs and realities of schooling for families. He has also written on the decline of single-sex schooling, co-education, school holiday care, fees, eligibility rules and subsidy settings. His reporting is grounded in classroom experience and aims at system-wide coverage that still stays tied to specific school communities.