Natasha Bita
Natasha Bita is an education specialist at The Australian who examines how power, policy and rights play out across schools and universities. Her coverage focuses on free speech, discrimination and student outcomes, using official data, inquiries and case studies to test how education institutions serve their communities. She brings a multi‑award winning record in social affairs reporting and investigations to the education beat.
Universities, free speech and antisemitism
Bita covers universities as contested spaces for free speech and student safety, including calls for formal antisemitism investigations at elite institutions.
She reports on the tension between institutional reputation, academic freedom and the protection of minority students when campus speech crosses into harassment. Her work treats these stories as governance and accountability issues rather than campus controversies alone.
She uses parliamentary and committee processes as key lenses on university policy.
In recent coverage she draws on fresh data on international student enrolments provided by vice‑chancellors at a Senate inquiry, highlighting that overseas students make up nearly half of enrolments at some universities. That approach lets her connect campus culture debates with funding, tax status and the broader political scrutiny of top‑ranked universities.
Free speech is a recurring concern in her remit, cutting across university antisemitism probes and wider coverage of how institutions regulate speech and protest.
Schools, testing and classroom practice
On schools, Bita reports closely on national testing and what it reveals about student performance.
In a recent NAPLAN piece she highlights that migrant children are outperforming other students in literacy and numeracy, using national results to show who is gaining and who is slipping behind. She then takes readers inside individual schools, such as Como West Public School, to show how “old‑fashioned” classroom practices are lifting results.
Her coverage extends beyond print into audio.
Bita unpacks NAPLAN results on The Australian’s daily news podcast The Front, explaining shifts in literacy and numeracy and the policy consequences for curriculum and teaching. She treats testing data as a starting point for stories about teaching methods, expectations of parents and the pressures on schools to deliver measurable improvement.
Across this work she keeps the focus on how decisions in classrooms and education departments translate into outcomes for children.
Education policy and social affairs
Bita’s brief sits at the intersection of education and social policy. Her professional profile lists a focus on education, free speech, social affairs, aged care, health policy, immigration, industrial relations and consumer law. That range means she often frames education stories within broader questions of generational fairness, regulatory oversight and the treatment of vulnerable people.
Her reporting on education issues has been recognised with awards from the NSW Professional Teachers’ Council and the Australian Council for Educational Leaders, underlining a depth of engagement with schools and teaching policy. Agenda‑setting coverage of aged care abuse has attracted an Older People Speak Out award, showing how she brings investigative techniques from social affairs into the education strand of her work.
She is also a Walkley Award‑winning journalist and a children’s author, which gives her a long view of how public debate and storytelling shape attitudes to schooling and childhood.
Format, tone and reach
Bita works as Education Editor, writing for The Australian’s national newspaper and website and contributing to its daily news podcast. Her role covers schools, higher education, vocational training and childcare, giving her reach across the full education pipeline. She draws on official inquiries, national datasets and on‑the‑ground reporting, using clear, direct language and concrete examples such as specific schools and Senate hearings.
Across beats, Bita’s work is distinguished by its combination of policy detail and human impact. She links committee rooms and regulatory frameworks to classrooms, campuses and aged care facilities, keeping institutions and decision‑makers in view.
For education stories that sit at the crossroads of free speech, discrimination, testing and social policy, she is a reporter whose work consistently treats education as a core part of public life rather than a standalone sector.
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.