Emily Kowal
Emily Kowal covers education for The Sydney Morning Herald with a focus on how technology, policy and school culture collide in the lives of students, teachers and families. Her reporting concentrates on online safety, artificial intelligence and social media inside school communities, while tracking pressures across selective schools, private education, international students and universities. She is recognised for short-form investigations that turn complex digital risks into clear, practical reporting for the education sector.
Technology, online safety and school life
Kowal’s most distinctive work sits at the junction of schooling and the digital environment, documenting how online platforms and AI are reshaping classrooms and student safety. She has reported on the shift from blanket bans on student social media use to teachers actively embracing platforms, using examples such as a NSW Department of Education dance video that drew hundreds of thousands of views to show how schools experiment with engagement while rules catch up.
Her coverage foregrounds how educators weigh the benefits of visibility and connection against the risks that come with sharing school life online.
She has broken exclusives on the rise of AI-generated deepfakes targeting school communities, reporting that images from official school social media feeds are being scraped and transformed into sexualised, mocking or damaging content aimed at children and teachers. In that work she details the eSafety regulator’s warnings that there is “no risk-free way” to post student photos, including new advisories that urge schools to rethink posting habits, obtain clearer consent and adjust privacy settings.
Her stories incorporate specific incident data, such as more than 100 reports of anonymous accounts targeting schools and staff in just three months, giving readers a concrete sense of scale.
Her reporting on artificial intelligence goes beyond headline risk to examine how children are actually using generative tools while core skills are still developing. In an exclusive on a Sydney private school partnering with universities to study AI’s impact, she explains how primary school students are turning to AI while they are still building writing ability, mathematical reasoning, scientific thinking, metacognition and self‑regulation. She connects these classroom changes to broader concerns that Australian schools are adopting new technologies without sufficient evidence or guidance.
Kowal’s investigation into digital predators operating within artificial intelligence and Roblox earned recognition in the short‑form journalism category at the Mid‑Year Walkley Awards and in the Herald’s young journalist prizes. That work underlines her focus on emerging forms of online exploitation and her ability to capture complex safety issues in concise pieces aimed at parents, educators and regulators.
Selective schools, private education and parental power
Kowal regularly reports on selective schooling and the tensions created by competition, quotas and high‑stakes decisions for families.
In her coverage of selective school offers under new gender quotas, she traces how 16,473 children vie for limited public selective places, with only one in four gaining entry, and shows how reforms will allocate equal numbers of spots to girls and boys from 2027. The story is told through specific cases, such as a student learning she had made it into Penrith High School, grounding policy changes in family‑level consequences.
Her co‑authored work on private schools and “entitled parents” explores how school leaders manage increasingly demanding families and the power struggles that can arise over discipline, pedagogy and reputation. That reporting looks at the strategies private schools use to push back against overreach while maintaining enrolments and community trust, highlighting a strain within fee‑paying education that is not visible from league tables alone.
Kowal also covers growth and strain in low‑fee independent schools, using Marsden Park Anglican College as a case study of surging enrolments despite basic infrastructure constraints such as limited transport and lack of sewerage connection. Her stories on this segment of the sector examine why parents are drawn to such schools, how they manage rapid expansion and what this reveals about shifting preferences in western Sydney’s education landscape.
International students and the tertiary pipeline
Beyond domestic enrolment issues, Kowal follows international students through the school system and into universities.
She has written on why international students favour Sydney’s in‑demand public schools, showing how reputation, location and perceived quality drive choices even as shrinking availability makes enrolment harder. That piece connects individual student experiences with system‑level pressures on capacity and access.
Her coverage of top‑performing HSC English Extension 2 students focuses on the small group admitted to the Young Writers Showcase and the traits and practices they share. By examining how just 19 students out of almost 1500 reached that level, she brings attention to academic excellence and the conditions that foster high‑level achievement in senior secondary schooling.
Kowal extends her round into higher education policy and international competition in a co‑authored story on Australian universities slipping in global rankings.
She reports that the University of Melbourne remained the country’s top‑ranked institution in the QS World University Rankings but fell from 13th to 19th place, with 25 Australian universities dropping in rank after a turbulent year. The piece ties ranking movements to growing regional competition and the politicisation of international students, linking school‑age recruitment to long‑term challenges for the tertiary sector.
Short-form investigations and live news reporting
Awards for short‑form journalism reflect Kowal’s tendency to deliver compact, investigative pieces that still carry clear public‑interest weight, particularly around digital threats to children. Within the Herald newsroom she has been recognised for turning complex investigations into accessible stories without losing detail or urgency.
Her byline also appears on live “news as it happened” coverage, where she contributes rolling updates across politics, leadership changes and national events over the course of a day. In those formats she shifts from deep, education‑specific reporting to fast‑moving general news, showing versatility alongside her specialist round.
Outside the daily news cycle, Kowal participates as a speaker at the Sydney Morning Herald Schools Summit, reflecting her role as a subject specialist on school policy and practice. She uses her social media presence to promote education stories and invite tips from teachers, parents and students, keeping her round closely connected to classroom‑level experience.
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.
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.