This article was first published in the Australian Financial Review on Thursday 2 July 2026.

One in three students fail to meet proficiency benchmarks in literacy and numeracy, and Australia trails well behind the world’s best-performing education systems, particularly in mathematics.

If more money were the solution, there would be reason for optimism. Thanks to the new funding deal between Federal Education Minister Jason Clare and his state counterparts, government schools are now on a path to full funding, and many teachers are in line for significant pay rises.

But money alone is not the solution. At current funding levels, how the dollars are spent matters more than putting new dollars on the table.

Australia already has some exceptional schools. The challenge is spreading that success system-wide so every child benefits.

Tasmania is taking that challenge seriously. In January, Tasmanian Education Minister Jo Palmer launched a five-year trial of multi-school organisations (MSOs), which will bring government schools together in formal families united under shared leadership.

The trial kicked off with an initial MSO in Hobart. Last week, Minister Palmer announced a second MSO would be launched in Launceston, with more to follow.

The model Tasmania is testing draws on reforms that have transformed school performance in England. The UK may not be known for the consistency of its politics or the longevity of its leaders, but this reform – building strong families of schools with clear accountability for results – has now been embraced by successive UK Conservative and Labour governments.

In the early 2000s, England created academies – publicly funded government schools with significant autonomy over staffing, budgets and curriculum. Over time, many schools discovered that autonomy was not enough.

Schools began grouping together under shared leadership, pooling expertise and resources to tackle common challenges. Multi-academy trusts were born. Governments of both political persuasions have expanded the number of academies – from 200 schools in 2010 to nearly 11,000 today. Most are part of a multi-academy trust.

Of the schools rated inadequate by England’s school inspectorate and subsequently absorbed into multi-academy trusts, the overwhelming majority are now rated good or outstanding.

In the best trusts, disadvantaged students outperform the national average in reading, writing and mathematics.

The model has not been perfect. Some trusts expanded too quickly, and weak oversight created governance failures. England is strengthening trust accountability, including expanding oversight to assess the overall performance of trusts, not just individual schools. But the model is embraced across the political aisle.

Earlier this year, the Labour government’s schools white paper set the expectation that every government school will join a high-quality trust, cementing trusts as the primary vehicle for school improvement.

In Australia, meanwhile, school improvement remains stuck between two flawed approaches.

In one approach, state governments attempt to drive change across hundreds (sometimes thousands) of schools from the centre, often struggling to provide meaningful support to individual schools.

In the other, schools are given greater autonomy but are left to solve increasingly complex challenges on their own, often leaving leaders feeling isolated and overwhelmed.

Attempts to get schools to work together through loose networks have also largely fallen flat. Without a formal structure, clear executive leadership and shared accountability for outcomes, these networks often result in superficial collaboration, at best.

In formal families of about 10 to 50 schools, each is large enough to solve common problems while staying closely connected to the communities they serve.

The model allows exceptional school leaders and specialist staff to be deployed within a family where they are needed most, rather than confined to individual schools.

It allows administrative functions to be shared, freeing principals to focus less on operational burdens and more on educational leadership.

Most importantly, it creates a system where it is much easier to spread excellence. Instead of every school independently trying to solve the same problems, it fosters much deeper collaboration on high-quality teaching, strong curriculum design and better outcomes for students.

And to be clear, these are public schools that remain public.

If Australia is genuinely committed to lifting outcomes for students, it is time for other state governments to try something different. Tasmania is showing what that looks like.