Conor Duffy
Conor Duffy links education policy to the daily lives of students, parents and teachers, treating the classroom as part of a wider social system rather than a silo. He reports as the ABC’s national education and parenting reporter, with a beat that spans schools, universities and family life. His coverage stands out for combining hard data, policy detail and personal stories to show who is affected when institutions change.
Education policy and uneven outcomes
Duffy spends much of his time on the mechanics and consequences of education policy, especially where test scores, rankings and funding reshape learning. In his reporting on university rankings and academic workload, including coverage of global league tables and warnings from academics that some staff should “find something else”, he examines how status pressures translate into burnout and strained teaching conditions.
He repeatedly returns to national assessments such as NAPLAN and what they reveal about entrenched underperformance and students falling behind. Across pieces on NAPLAN results showing one in three students not meeting standards and a significant group needing extra support, he focuses on how test data exposes long-standing gaps rather than treating it as a passing news event.
His work on the Job Ready Graduates legislation and the skyrocketing cost of humanities degrees extends this approach into tertiary education, mapping how price signals and policy design alter which students can afford particular pathways.
Classrooms, teachers and behaviour
Duffy’s education reporting often sits inside the classroom, following teachers as they confront behaviour, workload and changing expectations.
In stories on robots training teachers to deal with difficult students, he looks at practical tools used in teacher education to prepare graduates for challenging conversations with parents and classroom disruption. He treats these innovations as part of a broader shift toward evidence-based teaching and deliberate practice, not mere novelty.
His coverage of how to keep teachers and improve learning focuses on retention, training and teaching quality, highlighting reforms that embed cognitive science, literacy and numeracy strategies, and structured routines into teacher preparation. He also reports closely on school refusal, explaining why more children are refusing to go to school and what schools and families are trying to do about it.
Across these pieces, he gives space to teachers’ voices while tying them back to system-level debates about behaviour, curriculum and professional support.
Parents, student wellbeing and family stress
As much as he reports on institutions, Duffy consistently brings parents and student wellbeing into the frame. In work on school refusal and classroom distress, he explores the emotional load carried by families when a child disengages from school and the limits of existing support systems. His reporting on a national survey finding that most parents are psychologically distressed uses numbers to anchor a broader picture of how economic stress, caring responsibilities and education pressures combine.
Duffy’s parenting coverage is not limited to stress and refusal.
He reports on schools that “close the gap” on Indigenous literacy, showing how specific programs and teaching approaches can change outcomes for children and ease pressure on families. He also examines how education technology companies tracked millions of school students during lockdown, raising questions about privacy, data profiles and long-term consequences for children.
Across these topics, he treats wellbeing, trust and safety as central parts of the education beat, not side issues.
Investigative and international reporting background
Duffy’s current focus on education and parenting sits on top of a broader reporting career that includes foreign, environment and investigative work for the ABC. As the organisation’s North America correspondent, he spent several years reporting from the United States, later reflecting on that posting in long-form pieces. Earlier television and radio work includes coverage of spyware procurement by police and defence agencies, following revelations about the use of a controversial surveillance vendor, and reporting on anti-doping efforts through the story of disgraced sprinter Ben Johnson’s public campaign.
He has worked across flagship programs including Lateline, 7.30 and AM, and has reported from multiple Australian cities as well as international assignments in Asia, the Pacific and South America.
This background gives his education reporting a wider frame: he treats schools and universities as institutions embedded in politics, technology, security and global trends. The result is a beat that blends policy analysis, social reporting and investigative instincts, with education and parenting as the lens rather than a narrow niche.
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.
Catherine Strohfeldt
Catherine Strohfeldt reports how education policy, money and behaviour collide in Queensland classrooms and childcare services, focusing 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. She often starts with a single school, subject or provider to explain shifts in funding, discipline and workforce conditions, treating suspension statistics, surveys and on-the-ground accounts as complementary evidence. Her work links school fees, capital funding and teacher pay deals to who can access which schools and on what terms. Her beat extends into childcare chains in crisis and university leadership and governance. She also covers Queensland government, planning and environmental issues, showing how housing, health and coastal decisions reshape the communities in her education reporting.
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.
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.