Mostafa Rachwani
Mostafa Rachwani reports on how schools, public institutions and local politics shape life in Parramatta and western Sydney for The Sydney Morning Herald. His education coverage stays close to the ground, following crowding pressures, new school projects and the way faith, migration and urban change are reshaping classrooms and campuses.
Western Sydney schools and community growth
Rachwani’s core patch is western Sydney, where he treats new schools and cultural institutions as evidence of how fast-growing suburbs are changing. He covers plans for new primary schools in crowded areas as a response to population growth, focusing on what that means for families and local infrastructure rather than just building announcements. In his reporting on Australia’s first Hindu school on land in western Sydney, he explores how a rapidly growing religious community uses education to establish a mainstream presence, linking enrolment demand with demographic and cultural shifts.
He writes on gentrification in Fairfield and surrounding suburbs, describing how housing pressures and transport projects like the metro extension are transforming long-time working-class areas into the “new Redfern”. His coverage of the new Powerhouse museum in Parramatta examines whether residents see major cultural projects as relevant to their lives, treating visitor intent and local sentiment as part of the story of public investment in education-adjacent institutions.
Across these pieces, he tends to frame schools and civic projects as levers of opportunity and tension in suburbs negotiating rapid growth.
Religion, identity and education
Religion and identity recur in Rachwani’s education reporting, especially where faith-based initiatives intersect with mainstream systems.
His work on the Hindu school foregrounds how a religious group uses schooling to move from community-run settings into the broader education landscape, paying attention to governance, curriculum and community expectations. He reports on Muslim political organising, including the Muslim Vote movement that campaigned in federal and state elections after strong results in western Sydney, and tags this coverage to education when it touches schools, youth engagement and civic participation.
His professional background in Arab-Australian community media informs a focus on how migrant and minority communities build institutions, including schools, to reflect their values while navigating regulation and funding. In pieces on Australian doctors working in Gaza, he follows humanitarian professionals from Australia into conflict zones, tying their work back to debates over foreign aid, ethics and the responsibilities of publicly trained medical staff.
Taken together, his stories chart how religion, diaspora politics and professional pathways intersect with the education system and public expectations.
Politics, policing and social strain in Sydney
Alongside education, Rachwani reports on policing, crime and political conflict, often in ways that reveal pressure points for the communities he covers.
In coverage of Sydney’s gang war, he describes how residents experience violence and fear, using on-the-ground accounts and official responses to show how law enforcement and local leaders are grappling with instability. His co-written piece on the death of a police officer in a Sydney crash focuses on the partner’s plea that “going urgent isn’t worth your life”, giving space to grief, safety concerns and questions about police driving practices.
He also writes about the contest to represent western Sydney as investments flow into infrastructure such as Western Sydney International, mapping the emerging figures and interests that claim to speak for the region. These stories sit alongside his work on cultural projects like the Powerhouse to show how politics, safety and representation shape trust in public institutions, including schools and universities. Rachwani’s reporting style in this space combines detailed incidents with broader questions about who exercises power in western Sydney and how that affects everyday life.
Youth, digital culture and urban identity
Rachwani regularly covers youth culture and digital platforms, treating them as expressions of Sydney’s identity and fault lines.
In his feature on Nathan Asani’s meme page, he describes how maps of mullets, frozen yoghurt chains and suburb stereotypes circulate on Instagram, arguing that this online content reflects the city’s “soul” and how different areas see themselves. He notes that brands find the new social media environment harder to navigate, using this to show how commercial messages collide with grassroots humour and local codes.
Across topic pages on TikTok and Instagram, his byline appears on stories that read digital trends through the lens of specific suburbs, scenes and communities rather than as abstract technology coverage. This attention to local detail mirrors his education reporting, where the same suburbs, institutions and communities often appear, making youth culture another way he traces how western Sydney understands and presents itself.
Overall, Rachwani’s work is distinguished by its focus on western Sydney as a living system in which schools, religious institutions, cultural projects, politics and online spaces are tightly linked. He moves between hard news, exclusives and feature writing, but consistently anchors his stories in specific communities, tracing how policy decisions and new institutions play out in everyday lives.
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.