50 Essential Thought Leaders on Literacy and Numeracy in Australia

Introduction

If you lead a school in Australia in 2026, literacy and numeracy are not background concerns. They are the operational centre of your accountability environment, the focus of your professional development calendar, and the measure by which your school community, your employer, and your government judge whether your students are being well served. The voices shaping this field determine what you believe is possible, what approaches you implement, and how confidently you lead your staff through one of the most contested and consequential conversations in Australian education.

The stakes are not abstract. According to NAPLAN national results published in 2025, one in ten Australian students nationally still fails to meet minimum literacy and numeracy benchmarks, and among students from disadvantaged backgrounds, that figure is one in three. Australia's performance in international assessments including PISA and PIRLS has declined over the past two decades, a trend that has prompted sweeping policy reform, significant federal investment through the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, and a genuine national reckoning about how reading and mathematics are taught. The 2025 NAPLAN results showed encouraging signs of progress in some year levels and domains, but Grattan Institute researchers Amy Haywood and Jordana Hunter described the national improvement targets as a floor rather than a ceiling, warning that ambition must be higher if Australia is to genuinely close the gap.

Against this backdrop, knowing who the important voices are matters. This list brings together 50 people from across the research, policy, practice, and advocacy landscape who are genuinely shaping what Australia knows and does about literacy and numeracy in schools. They include university researchers who generate the evidence base, policy analysts who translate that evidence into government decisions, system leaders who shape what thousands of schools are expected to do, practitioners who build the professional learning programs that reach teachers directly, Indigenous education leaders who challenge deficit framings and build culturally grounded approaches, and emerging voices whose work points toward where the field needs to go.

The list is deliberately built to move past the most prominent household names in global education and surface voices who are specifically relevant to the Australian context in 2026. Every person on this list was selected on three criteria: substantive and verifiable contribution to the literacy or numeracy conversation in Australia, active engagement in the field, and genuine value for school leaders seeking to grow their professional knowledge.

If your school is grappling with the leadership challenges that data from NAPLAN and other assessments creates inside your team, whether that means navigating difficult conversations with staff, building team alignment around an instructional approach, or helping your leadership group work through competing perspectives, Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author who works with school leadership teams across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the USA, and beyond. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss what that might look like for your school.

Why Literacy and Numeracy Matter More Than Ever

The phrase "literacy and numeracy" can sound like policy shorthand, but it describes something deeply human: a child's capacity to make sense of the world through text and number. When that capacity is not built reliably in the first years of school, the consequences extend across an entire life. Students who leave primary school without secure reading skills face compounding disadvantage in every subject domain, every year level, and every future pathway.

The Australian system has been confronting this reality with increasing urgency. The 2023 Education Ministers' reform to bring NAPLAN forward from May to March, putting results in teachers' hands earlier in the school year, was described by Federal Minister for Education Jason Clare as the most sweeping change to NAPLAN since 2008. The Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, committing an estimated $16.5 billion in additional public school funding between 2025 and 2034, ties that investment explicitly to evidence-based literacy and numeracy reforms including Year 1 phonics and numeracy checks, explicit teaching practices, and small-group tutoring support. Every state and territory has now committed to a phonics-based approach to early reading instruction, representing a significant and contested shift in how Australian teachers teach reading.

Simultaneously, the numeracy picture demands attention. Grattan Institute analysis from 2025 found that international evidence strongly supports explicit, well-sequenced mathematics instruction backed by high-quality curriculum materials, yet many Australian schools still lack the whole-school curriculum coherence needed to deliver it consistently. The institute's Reading Guarantee and Maths Guarantee reports have become foundational documents for school leaders trying to understand what evidence-informed practice actually requires. NAPLAN data shows male students outperforming female students in numeracy at most year levels, while Indigenous students, students in remote areas, and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds face persistent and unacceptable gaps in both literacy and numeracy outcomes.

The thought leaders on this list are the people doing something about these challenges. Following their work gives school leaders a sharper evidence base, a more honest picture of where the debates are, and a clearer sense of what high-quality literacy and numeracy education actually looks like in Australian classrooms.

For more on the public school system context these thought leaders operate within, check out my blog post '50 Best Thought Leaders in Public Schooling in Australia and New Zealand (2026)' at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-public-schooling-australia-nz

How This List Was Compiled

Every person on this list was selected on three criteria. First, substantive contribution to the literacy or numeracy conversation in Australia, whether through peer-reviewed research, policy analysis, school-facing professional learning, or sustained advocacy on issues that directly affect how Australian students learn to read, write, and work with numbers. Second, active current engagement with the field in 2025 or 2026, either through research outputs, publications, professional development delivery, or public commentary. Third, the list was deliberately built to surface voices beyond the most prominent household names, including mid-career researchers, practitioner-researchers working directly with schools, and voices from disciplines and geographies that are underrepresented in the dominant policy conversation.

The list draws from university research, government institutions, independent think tanks, structured literacy practice, the numeracy and mathematics education community, Indigenous education, and school leadership circles. It spans all states and territories and reflects the genuine diversity of the field.

Category 1: System Architects and National Policy Leaders

The people in this category hold the institutional levers that shape what thousands of schools are expected to do and how the national literacy and numeracy agenda is defined, funded, and measured. Their decisions ripple through every classroom in Australia. Understanding their thinking is not optional for any school leader who wants to navigate the current policy environment with clarity.

1. Stephen Gniel

CEO, Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) | Australia 

Stephen Gniel leads the national body responsible for NAPLAN and the Australian Curriculum, two of the most consequential instruments shaping what Australian schools teach and how they are measured. His role puts him at the centre of every major debate about assessment reform, digital testing, and what national literacy and numeracy expectations should be. In 2026, approximately 1.3 million students across more than 9,400 schools and campuses sit NAPLAN tests under ACARA's governance, making Gniel's leadership directly relevant to the operational realities of every principal in Australia.

Gniel has written publicly that the 2025 NAPLAN results were broadly stable, with improvements visible in some year levels, while consistently emphasising that the results are a tool for school improvement rather than an end in themselves. His framing of NAPLAN as a diagnostic resource rather than a ranking mechanism represents a key policy position that school leaders need to understand when communicating with staff, students, and communities about assessment data.

2. Lisa Rodgers PSM

CEO, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) | Australia 

Lisa Rodgers joined ACER as CEO in September 2024, taking over from the long-serving Professor Geoff Masters. She leads one of the most respected education research organisations in the Asia-Pacific region, whose work on assessment, professional learning, and research translation shapes how teachers teach and how systems measure progress. ACER's PAT (Progressive Achievement Tests) assessments are used by thousands of Australian schools to track student reading and numeracy growth, making ACER's research influence deeply practical as well as academic.

Rodgers brings extensive experience in government, strategic leadership, and technology, and her leadership of ACER will determine how the organisation navigates the intersection of AI-driven assessment, PISA 2025, and the growing demand for evidence that directly supports classroom practice. For school leaders, ACER remains a foundational source for evidence-based guidance on literacy and numeracy, and Rodgers is the person shaping where that guidance comes from.

3. Tim Bullard

CEO, Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) | Australia 

Tim Bullard leads the national body behind the Australian Professional Standard for Principals and the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, two frameworks that define what quality teaching and school leadership looks like across Australia. AITSL's work on literacy and numeracy specifically includes the standards for what teachers are expected to know about teaching reading, writing, and numeracy, embedded in the accreditation requirements for initial teacher education programs.

The Australian Professional Standards for Middle Leaders, released under AITSL's watch, are particularly relevant for school leaders building instructional leadership capacity in literacy and numeracy coordinators. Bullard's influence on how the next generation of Australian teachers are trained to teach reading and mathematics makes AITSL a critical organisation for any principal trying to understand why their new graduates may arrive with stronger or weaker foundational knowledge.

4. Jenny Donovan

CEO, Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) | Australia 

Jenny Donovan leads the national education evidence body established specifically to translate research into practical guidance for Australian schools. Under her leadership, AERO has become the go-to source for evidence on literacy instruction, numeracy development, and school improvement, producing accessible summaries, implementation guides, and research frameworks that principals can use directly. AERO's multi-tiered system of supports guide for secondary schools, developed in collaboration with Monash University and ACER, represents exactly the kind of evidence translation that school leaders need to respond to NAPLAN data.

Donovan's positioning at the intersection of research and practice makes AERO's output different from traditional academic research: it is designed to answer the questions that school leaders actually face, including what to do for students who start Year 7 three or more years behind their peers in literacy and numeracy. Following AERO's work is one of the highest-value things an Australian principal can do in 2026.

5. Jordana Hunter

Program Director, Education, McKinnon Institute | Australia 

Jordana Hunter is one of Australia's most respected education policy thinkers, who joined the McKinnon Institute as Program Director, Education in March 2026 after five years as Education Program Director at the Grattan Institute. At Grattan, she co-authored the landmark Reading Guarantee, the Maths Guarantee, and the Lesson Lottery reports, which have become essential reading for school leaders seeking evidence on what high-quality literacy and numeracy instruction actually requires. Her research on structured literacy, whole-school curriculum approaches, and the role of high-quality curriculum materials in teacher workload has shaped state and federal policy debates.

Hunter has consistently argued that evidence-based improvement in literacy and numeracy requires not just the right instructional approaches but the right infrastructure: coherent curriculum materials, genuine professional learning, and system-level leadership that holds quality improvement as a non-negotiable. Her move to McKinnon signals continued engagement with these questions from a different institutional vantage point. School leaders following her work will find it both challenging and practically useful.

6. Jason Clare

Federal Minister for Education | Australia 

Jason Clare is the most consequential political figure shaping national literacy and numeracy policy in Australia. His government's implementation of the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, the Year 1 phonics and numeracy checks, and the most sweeping NAPLAN reforms since 2008 has made literacy and numeracy outcomes central to the federal school education agenda. Clare has been explicit that NAPLAN results should drive instructional reform, describing the 2025 results as "encouraging signs" while emphasising that more work is needed.

Clare's framing of literacy and numeracy improvement as tied to the equity agenda, helping kids catch up, keep up, and finish school, is worth understanding for any principal who needs to communicate with parents and communities about why reform is happening and what it is designed to achieve. His political visibility gives literacy and numeracy a profile in the national conversation that school leaders can leverage.

7. Amy Haywood

Deputy Program Director, Education, Grattan Institute | Australia 

Amy Haywood is one of the most practically useful voices in Australian education policy, bringing both academic rigour and genuine classroom experience to Grattan's work on literacy and numeracy. As Deputy Program Director, she has co-authored the Maths Guarantee, the Reading Guarantee, and analyses of tutoring programs, curriculum coherence, and the quality of teacher professional learning. Her LinkedIn presence is among the most substantive of any education policy researcher in Australia, with regular posts that translate Grattan's research into actionable insights for school leaders and teachers.

Haywood is also a member of the Tasmanian Premier's Lifting Literacy Outcomes Monitoring Group, a role that gives her direct engagement with how evidence-based literacy reform plays out at the system level. Her observation that the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement improvement targets are "a floor rather than a ceiling" is a useful frame for school leaders who want to understand where national ambition falls short of what the evidence actually recommends.

8. Murat Dizdar

Secretary, NSW Department of Education | Australia 

Murat Dizdar leads the largest state education department in Australia, overseeing a system that has been at the forefront of literacy reform including the mandatory Year 1 phonics check, the transition away from the English Online Interview, and the rollout of evidence-based reading programs across government schools. His own background as a product of the NSW public school system gives him genuine credibility when he speaks about equity and the moral imperative to ensure every child learns to read.

Dizdar's public visibility and his willingness to engage on literacy reform make him an important voice for school leaders trying to understand how system-level decisions get made. NSW's approach to explicit literacy instruction has been closely watched by other states, and Dizdar's leadership of that work makes him one of the most influential figures in practical literacy reform in Australia.

For school leadership teams navigating the demands that evidence-based literacy and numeracy reform places on communication, team alignment, and professional trust, Jonno White delivers Working Genius facilitation sessions and leadership workshops that give leadership teams the shared language and practical tools to work together more effectively. Jonno is the bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out and the host of The Leadership Conversations Podcast with over 230 episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to start a conversation.

Category 2: University Researchers — Literacy

These researchers generate the evidence base that underpins literacy policy and practice in Australia. The best of them bridge the gap between university laboratories and school classrooms, producing work that directly informs what teachers are trained to do and what systems are expected to implement.

9. Professor Anne Castles

ARC Laureate Fellow, Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy, Australian Catholic University | Australia 

Professor Anne Castles is one of the most important literacy scientists working in Australia today, leading a five-year Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship investigating why so many Australian secondary school students still lack functional literacy. Her work addresses what she has described as a critical blindspot in Australian education: the assumption that children who made it through primary school without learning to read well will somehow catch up in secondary school without targeted support.

Castles' research at ACU's Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy (ACAL) focuses on reading and reading disorders, orthographic learning, and the cognitive processes involved in adolescent literacy development. Her observation that "there's a significant proportion of high school kids in Australia who do not have functional" literacy skills represents a challenge to secondary school leaders that goes largely unaddressed in most professional learning programs.

10. Professor Rauno Parrila

Director, Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy, Australian Catholic University | Australia 

Professor Rauno Parrila co-founded and directs the Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy at ACU, which has rapidly established itself as one of the most important research centres for literacy science in the Asia-Pacific region. His research spans reading acquisition, reading difficulties, dyslexia, and the role of phonological awareness in learning to read, drawing on both Finnish and Australian educational contexts to produce internationally significant work.

Parrila's leadership of ACAL has attracted a cluster of world-class literacy researchers to ACU, including Professor Castles, and his vision for the Centre as a bridge between research and classroom practice is particularly relevant for school leaders trying to connect the science of reading with what teachers actually do. His work is essential for any school leader building a literacy improvement strategy grounded in the strongest available evidence.

11. Professor Mary Ryan

Professor, Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy, Australian Catholic University | Australia 

Professor Mary Ryan is a senior researcher at ACAL/ACU whose work focuses on writing pedagogy, assessment, and the enabling and constraining conditions for teacher professional learning. As ACU is the largest provider of initial teacher education in Australia, Ryan's influence on how the next generation of Australian teachers are prepared to teach literacy is considerable. Her research on writing instruction addresses one of the most persistently underperforming domains in NAPLAN data: writing scores at the Year 7 level represent one of the weakest areas nationally.

Ryan's work on reflective practice and professional learning provides school leaders with a research base for understanding what professional development in literacy actually needs to include to shift practice, not just knowledge. Her engagement with teachers as professionals whose development requires time, trust, and coherent support makes her work particularly relevant for principals building staff capacity rather than just compliance.

12. Distinguished Laureate Professor Jenny Gore AM

Laureate Professor and Director, Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, University of Newcastle | Australia 

Professor Jenny Gore is the creator of Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR), one of the most evidence-backed and practically proven models of teacher professional development in Australia. Co-developed with Dr Julie Bowe, QTR embeds structured peer observation and collaborative analysis of teaching into teachers' regular practice, consistently demonstrating improvements in instructional quality across government, Catholic, and independent schools. The University of Newcastle's Paul Ramsay Foundation partnership at $16.4 million represented the largest philanthropic research partnership in the university's history, funding QTR's expansion across Australia.

Gore's research, published across more than a decade of randomised control trials and large-scale school studies, confirms that quality professional development is both the most important in-school factor affecting student outcomes and one of the most neglected investments in the Australian system. For school leaders building a literacy or numeracy improvement culture, QTR's framework for what constitutes high-quality teaching is a rigorous and practical starting point.

13. Professor Pasi Sahlberg

Professor in Educational Leadership, University of Melbourne | Australia 

Professor Pasi Sahlberg is one of the most widely cited education researchers in Australia and internationally, originally from Finland and now based at the University of Melbourne. His work on high-performing school systems, the conditions for teacher professionalism, and the dangers of high-stakes standardised testing has made him a critical voice in Australian debates about what NAPLAN is actually measuring and whether Australia's reform approach is taking the country in the right direction. His LinkedIn presence is among the most active of any education academic in Australia.

Sahlberg has consistently argued that Australia's focus on standardised testing and measurable benchmarks misses the deeper structural changes needed to build a genuinely high-performing system: investing in teacher quality, reducing administrative burdens, and building the professional trust that allows teachers to apply evidence well. While he is among the most prominent voices in Australian education globally, his specific contributions to the Australian literacy and numeracy debate are directly relevant to how school leaders think about what NAPLAN data means and what it does not mean.

14. Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith

Professor, Australian Catholic University | Australia 

Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith is one of Australia's leading authorities on educational assessment, writing assessment, and the relationship between curriculum, assessment, and reporting. She was one of three expert panel members on the 2020 national NAPLAN Review, alongside Professor Barry McGaw and Professor Bill Louden, making her among the most authoritative voices on the design and purpose of national assessment in Australia. Her research addresses how assessment systems can be designed to genuinely inform teaching rather than distort it.

Wyatt-Smith's work on writing assessment is particularly relevant in a context where NAPLAN writing scores have declined or stagnated, and where there is ongoing debate about whether the NAPLAN writing task measures what matters most about student writing. Her combination of assessment expertise and practical school engagement makes her an important voice for school leaders trying to understand the relationship between what NAPLAN measures and what good literacy teaching actually produces.

15. Professor Robyn Ewing AM

Professor Emerita and Co-Director, CREATE Centre, University of Sydney | Australia 

Professor Robyn Ewing AM is a long-standing advocate for the role of children's literature, drama, and the arts in building genuine literacy in Australian primary schools. As Professor Emerita and Co-Director of the Creativity in Research, Engaging the Arts, Transforming Education (CREATE) Centre at the University of Sydney, her work challenges a framing of literacy that reduces it to phonics and decoding while ignoring the comprehension, vocabulary, and meaning-making dimensions that determine whether students become genuinely literate rather than merely functional decoders.

Ewing's partnership with Sydney Theatre Company on the School Drama program, which has run since 2009, demonstrates how evidence-based drama pedagogy builds the oral language foundations that underpin reading comprehension. Her work is a useful counterweight for school leaders who want to ensure their literacy program is building deep literacy, not just improving phonics check results.

16. Dr Misty Adoniou

Associate Professor Emerita, University of Canberra | Australia 

Dr Misty Adoniou is one of the most provocative and intellectually rigorous voices in Australian literacy debates, consistently challenging overly narrow framings of literacy instruction that focus on phonics at the expense of vocabulary, grammar, comprehension, and writing. As a specialist in language, literacy, and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), she brings a perspective grounded in how language actually works that is often absent from policy debates.

Adoniou's public writing for The Conversation and her research on teacher knowledge of language and literacy have made her a key voice for school leaders trying to navigate the "reading wars" framing without losing sight of the full complexity of what literacy instruction requires. Her observation that NAPLAN reading scores have barely shifted despite a decade of phonics advocacy prompts important questions about whether phonics policy is addressing the full challenge.

17. Greg Ashman

Deputy Principal, Ballarat Clarendon College; Honorary Fellow, Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy, ACU | Australia 

Greg Ashman is a working teacher and school leader whose Substack newsletter "Filling the Pail" has become one of the most widely read and respected practitioner-intellectual publications in Australian education. His work translates cognitive science, explicit teaching research, and instructional design into accessible, practical commentary for teachers and school leaders. As an Honorary Fellow at ACAL/ACU and a PhD in Instructional Design, he bridges the gap between research and classroom practice in a way that few voices in Australian education manage.

Ashman is the author of several books on explicit teaching and cognitive load theory, and his advocacy for structured approaches to both literacy and mathematics instruction is grounded in deep engagement with the research literature. His school-based perspective gives him credibility with practitioners that many academics lack, and his willingness to engage publicly with contested ideas in Australian education makes him a valuable voice for school leaders building their professional knowledge.

Category 3: University Researchers — Numeracy and Mathematics

The numeracy side of the Australian literacy and numeracy conversation has its own distinct community of researchers, many of whom work specifically on how mathematical thinking develops in children and what teaching approaches are most effective. Their work is essential for school leaders building school-wide numeracy improvement cultures.

18. Professor Catherine Attard

Professor of Mathematics Education, Western Sydney University; Board Chair, Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers | Australia 

Professor Catherine Attard is a leading researcher in mathematics education whose work on student and teacher engagement with mathematics has shaped how Australian primary schools think about numeracy instruction. As Board Chair of the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers and a Professor at Western Sydney University, she combines institutional leadership with an active research program and regular professional learning delivery. Her LinkedIn presence is genuinely substantive, with posts that connect mathematics education research to school practice.

Attard's research on technology and mathematics learning, engagement frameworks, and primary maths pedagogy provides school leaders with an evidence base for understanding what makes numeracy instruction effective at the primary level. Her focus on engagement as a prerequisite for learning makes her work relevant for school leaders facing student disengagement from mathematics well before the secondary years.

19. Emerita Professor Dianne Siemon AM

Emerita Professor of Mathematics Education, RMIT University; Adjunct Professor, University of Notre Dame Australia | Australia 

Professor Dianne Siemon is one of the most important numeracy researchers Australia has produced, with a career spanning decades of large-scale research and development projects on number learning in partnership with state and territory education departments. Her work on multiplicative thinking, the development of number ideas and strategies, and learning progressions for mathematical reasoning in Years 4 to 9 has had direct policy influence across the country. The Beth Southwell Practical Implications Award, jointly presented by MERGA and AAMT, recognised her team's work on evidence-based learning progressions.

Siemon's contribution to Indigenous mathematics education in the Northern Territory, combining rigorous numeracy research with culturally responsive approaches, makes her work particularly relevant for school leaders in contexts where Indigenous student numeracy outcomes require specific attention. Her research bridges the gap between what cognitive science tells us about how children develop number concepts and what teachers need to do to support that development.

20. Professor Kim Beswick

Professor of Mathematics Education, UNSW Sydney | Australia 

Professor Kim Beswick is a senior mathematics education researcher at UNSW Sydney whose work spans teacher beliefs and practices, mathematical problem-solving, and the development of mathematical thinking in school students. Her research on what teachers believe about mathematics and how those beliefs shape their instructional decisions is particularly relevant for school leaders trying to understand why some numeracy improvement initiatives succeed and others do not.

Beswick has been active in both the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA) and national professional learning contexts, making her a bridge between academic research and school practice. Her work on mathematical identity and student engagement with mathematics addresses the affective dimensions of numeracy learning that are often overlooked in policy discussions focused primarily on achievement data.

21. Professor Janette Bobis

Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Sydney | Australia 

Professor Janette Bobis is a widely respected mathematics education researcher at the University of Sydney whose work on primary school mathematics, teacher professional learning, and the transition from primary to secondary mathematics has shaped both curriculum frameworks and professional development design. Her research consistently identifies the importance of conceptual understanding as the foundation for procedural fluency, a framing that directly challenges drill-and-practice approaches to numeracy instruction.

Bobis has contributed to multiple editions of Research in Mathematics Education in Australasia, the field's most comprehensive periodic review, and her work on how children develop early number sense provides school leaders with an evidence base for understanding what quality early years numeracy instruction looks like. Her engagement with classroom teachers through professional learning programs gives her research a practical orientation that principal audiences find accessible.

22. Emeritus Professor Bill Louden AM

Emeritus Professor, Murdoch University; Board Chair, ACER (2024) | Australia 

Professor Bill Louden is one of Australia's most distinguished education researchers, whose career has included co-leading the 2020 national NAPLAN Review alongside Professor Barry McGaw and Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith. His expertise spans literacy, numeracy, school improvement, and educational leadership, making him one of the few voices who can speak with authority across the full breadth of what this list covers.

As a former Dean of Education at Murdoch University and a long-standing contributor to national education policy, Louden has shaped how successive governments have thought about literacy instruction, teacher quality, and school improvement. His willingness to engage publicly on contested questions in Australian education, combined with his deep expertise in both literacy and assessment, makes his work essential reading for school leaders who want to understand the policy context they operate within.

23. Emeritus Professor Peter Sullivan

Emeritus Professor of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, Monash University | Australia 

Professor Peter Sullivan is one of the most influential voices in Australian mathematics education, particularly known for his work on problem-solving, open-ended tasks, and the role of mathematical reasoning in building genuine numeracy. His "Launch, Explore, Discuss" teaching model has been widely adopted in Victorian schools and provides a framework for mathematics instruction that prioritises student thinking while maintaining high expectations.

Sullivan has contributed extensively to curriculum development, teacher professional learning, and research on what effective numeracy instruction looks like across the primary and secondary years. His work challenges purely procedural approaches to mathematics teaching and makes a research-grounded case for building mathematical reasoning from the early years. For school leaders designing whole-school numeracy approaches, his frameworks offer a practical starting point.

Category 4: Think Tanks and Independent Policy Research

These researchers work outside university structures, often producing the analysis and advocacy that moves policy fastest in Australian education. Their perspectives span the political spectrum and include both strong supporters and critics of current reform directions.

24. Glenn Fahey

Program Director, Education Policy, Centre for Independent Studies | Australia 

Glenn Fahey leads the education program at the Centre for Independent Studies, where his work focuses on education accountability, school system performance, and the evidence for explicit instruction in literacy and numeracy. He has been a consistent and high-profile advocate for evidence-based teaching, phonics instruction, and assessment-driven improvement, and has written widely in major Australian newspapers on why NAPLAN results indicate that funding alone has not driven the outcomes the system needs.

Fahey's perspective comes from a free-market think tank tradition that has specific views about school choice, accountability, and the role of government in education, and school leaders who follow his work should engage with it knowing its institutional context. His analysis of NAPLAN trends and his advocacy for what he calls "knowledge-rich curriculum" are nonetheless grounded in real research and are worth understanding as part of the full picture of the Australian literacy and numeracy policy debate.

25. Trisha Jha

Research Fellow, Centre for Independent Studies | Australia 

Trisha Jha is a research fellow whose work has focused on literacy outcomes, school funding accountability, and what evidence-based education policy actually requires. Her observation, published following the 2025 NAPLAN results, that governments have tried "spending their way to school improvement" but that approach has "reached its limits," reflects a perspective that challenges both the adequacy of funding commitments and the quality of how those funds are spent.

Jha's research on explicit teaching, teacher quality, and the relationship between classroom practice and national outcomes provides a useful counterpoint to policy frameworks that focus primarily on funding as the lever for change. Her work is particularly useful for school leaders trying to understand the range of positions in the policy debate and how those positions shape the decisions that flow down to schools.

26. Nick Parkinson

Senior Associate, Grattan Institute | Australia 

Nick Parkinson is a co-author of two of the most practically significant reports for school leaders in recent years: the Maths Guarantee and the Reading Guarantee, both from the Grattan Institute. His analysis of curriculum planning, teacher workload, and the international evidence for whole-school instructional approaches has shaped how school leaders in Australia think about what systemic literacy and numeracy improvement actually requires.

Parkinson's LinkedIn presence features genuine substantive posts that connect Grattan's research to the everyday decisions that school leaders face, including how to implement a whole-school curriculum approach, how to use tutoring programs effectively, and how to read NAPLAN data in ways that inform rather than distort instructional decisions. He is a rising voice in Australian education policy whose work is particularly accessible for practitioners.

27. Professor Geoff Masters AO

Independent researcher and author; former CEO, Australian Council for Educational Research (1998-2024) | Australia 

Professor Geoff Masters spent 26 years as CEO of ACER, during which time he became Australia's most authoritative voice on educational assessment and the use of data to drive school improvement. Since stepping down in August 2024, he has continued to write, research, and publish, with his 2026 book from Routledge exploring how schooling might evolve to better serve all learners. His Teacher magazine column, published throughout 2025, continues to provide school leaders with some of the clearest thinking available on assessment, learning progressions, and what good literacy and numeracy education actually looks like at scale.

Masters' concept of a "decision-making loop," in which teachers use assessment data to understand student needs, plan appropriate responses, and adjust practice accordingly, provides a practical framework for school leaders building assessment-informed cultures. His decades of reviewing literacy and numeracy strategies for state and territory governments give him a comparative perspective that is difficult to replicate.

Category 5: Structured Literacy and Science of Reading Practitioners

The structured literacy movement has become one of the most significant forces reshaping how Australian primary schools teach reading. The practitioners in this category have been at the forefront of that shift, combining research knowledge with school-facing practice to help teachers and school leaders understand what evidence-informed literacy instruction actually requires.

28. Dr Jennifer Buckingham OAM

Director of Strategy and Senior Research Fellow, MultiLit | Australia 

Dr Jennifer Buckingham is one of Australia's most visible and persistent advocates for phonics-based reading instruction and the Year 1 phonics screening check. As Director of Strategy at MultiLit and founder of the Five from Five project, she has spent two decades making the case that Australia's approach to early reading instruction has failed too many children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that systematic synthetic phonics is the most effective foundation for reading instruction.

Buckingham's research on the phonics check, her policy submissions on NAPLAN reform, and her public writing have directly influenced multiple state and federal decisions on early literacy assessment. Her observation that "learning to read is a right, not a privilege" frames her advocacy in terms that connect literacy reform to social justice. School leaders trying to understand the evidence base for the phonics check and explicit literacy instruction will find her work among the clearest and most accessible available.

29. Lyn Stone

Founder, Lifelong Literacy | Victoria, Australia 

Lyn Stone is an educational linguist, author, and international literacy consultant whose practice is grounded in the science of language and reading. As founder of Lifelong Literacy, she has worked with schools across Australia and internationally for more than two decades, helping teachers understand the structure of the English writing system and what that means for how reading and spelling should be taught. Her three books, Spelling for Life, Language for Life, and Reading for Life, have attracted international recognition and are required reading in several major literacy programs.

Stone's particular contribution is in helping teachers understand the deep linguistic underpinnings of literacy instruction, including phonology, morphology, orthography, and etymology, in ways that make their teaching more effective and more responsive to the range of learners in their classrooms. Her regular LinkedIn posts and professional development programs across Australia make her one of the most practically influential voices in the structured literacy space.

30. Associate Professor Lorraine Hammond AM

Associate Professor, University of Notre Dame Australia | Western Australia 

Associate Professor Lorraine Hammond AM has spent decades working to transform how reading is taught in Australian schools, particularly in Western Australia and in remote Indigenous communities. Her leadership of the Kimberley School Project, supporting evidence-based literacy instruction in 23 regional and remote schools, has achieved significant literacy improvements in contexts where outcomes have historically been very poor. The project secured $10 million in Closing the Gap funding for expansion, a recognition of its documented effectiveness.

Hammond's induction into the WA Women's Hall of Fame reflects the scale of her practical impact on literacy outcomes in some of Australia's most challenging school contexts. As Vice President of Learning Difficulties Australia and a leading voice on teacher knowledge of phonics and explicit instruction, she represents the kind of researcher-practitioner whose work moves simultaneously through academic channels and into direct school improvement.

31. Toni Hatten-Roberts

National literacy specialist and consultant | Australia 

Toni Hatten-Roberts is a national literacy specialist who has gained significant visibility through her work with state and territory governments on evidence-based literacy instruction, including a keynote role at the NT Government's 2025 Education Leaders' Summit alongside Jordana Hunter. Her expertise spans structured literacy approaches, phonics instruction, and the implementation of explicit literacy programs in schools serving disadvantaged communities.

Hatten-Roberts' work is particularly relevant for school leaders in systems that have recently committed to phonics-based approaches and are working through what that means for teacher professional development, assessment practices, and the management of community expectations. Her practical school-facing orientation makes her one of the most useful voices for principals navigating the day-to-day challenges of literacy reform implementation.

Category 6: Indigenous Literacy and Equity Voices

Australia's literacy and numeracy gap is not distributed evenly. Students from Indigenous backgrounds, remote communities, and low socioeconomic contexts face persistent and disproportionate challenges that are not solved by instructional approaches alone. The voices in this category bring perspectives on equity, cultural responsiveness, and systemic change that are essential for any complete understanding of the Australian literacy and numeracy challenge.

32. Dr Chris Sarra

Founder and CEO, Stronger Smarter Institute | Australia 

Dr Chris Sarra is one of Australia's most important voices on what it means to expect and achieve high literacy and numeracy outcomes for Indigenous students. His "Strong and Smart" philosophy, developed during his transformative principalship at Cherbourg State School, challenges deficit narratives about Indigenous student capacity and builds educational environments grounded in high expectations and Indigenous identity. The Stronger Smarter Institute works with schools across Australia to build high-expectation cultures that produce genuine academic achievement.

Sarra's approach to literacy and numeracy is inseparable from his approach to identity and belonging: students who see themselves as capable, valued learners are far more likely to engage with the rigorous instruction that builds strong foundations in reading and mathematics. His work is essential reading for any school leader working with Indigenous students or working to close achievement gaps in their community.

33. Professor Marnee Shay

Professor and Deputy Head of School, University of Queensland | Australia 

Professor Marnee Shay is a major Indigenous education scholar whose work on flexible schooling, Indigenous student success, and the design of educational environments that genuinely serve First Nations learners is directly relevant to literacy and numeracy outcomes. Her research challenges the structural assumptions of mainstream schooling that systematically disadvantage many Indigenous students, and provides a research base for school leaders thinking about how curriculum, assessment, and school culture interact with literacy development.

Shay's work on co-design approaches to education, in which Indigenous communities have genuine ownership of how their children are educated, represents a more sustainable and effective path to closing literacy and numeracy gaps than top-down reform approaches. School leaders with significant Indigenous student populations will find her research both challenging and practically valuable.

34. Scientia Associate Professor Kevin Lowe

UNSW | Australia 

Kevin Lowe is a Gubbi Gubbi man and one of the leading researchers on integrating Aboriginal community knowledge into public school curricula and literacy programs. His work addresses the gap between what mainstream literacy instruction offers and what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students need to develop both the literacy skills the school system measures and the cultural knowledge their communities value.

Lowe's research provides school leaders with a framework for thinking about literacy that goes beyond decoding and fluency to include the cultural and linguistic dimensions of reading and writing that determine whether literacy education is genuinely transformative for Indigenous students. His work is particularly relevant for leaders in schools with significant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enrolments who want to go beyond compliance with mandatory curriculum to build genuinely effective literacy programs.

35. Sherrill Nixon

CEO, Australian Schools Plus | Australia 

Sherrill Nixon leads Australian Schools Plus, a national not-for-profit organisation that connects philanthropic support with schools in disadvantaged communities to improve educational outcomes including literacy and numeracy. Her LinkedIn posts consistently highlight the scale of the literacy and numeracy gap in remote schools, noting that nearly 80% of students in Australia's most remote schools have fallen behind expected levels for their age, a figure that should be confronting for every school leader and policymaker in the country.

Nixon's work on the Schools Plus Teaching Awards and Teaching Fellows program recognises and supports teachers who are making genuine progress on literacy and numeracy outcomes in the most challenging contexts in Australian education. Her perspective as a bridge between the philanthropic sector and frontline schools gives her a unique vantage point on what actually moves the dial for disadvantaged students.

36. Dr Fiona Longmuir

Research Fellow, Monash University | Australia 

Dr Fiona Longmuir has been a significant voice on the impact of NAPLAN on school culture and teaching practice, co-authoring the widely cited Monash University analysis "Learning from Disruption: Why We Should Rethink the Place of NAPLAN in Our Schools." Her research on educational leadership, teacher retention, and student voice provides a broader framing for how school leaders should think about the relationship between assessment pressure and the conditions for genuine literacy and numeracy improvement.

Longmuir's work on teacher retention is directly relevant to the literacy context: schools that cannot retain experienced teachers cannot build the deep instructional expertise that literacy improvement requires. Her research gives school leaders a framework for understanding how assessment systems interact with staff wellbeing, professional agency, and ultimately with the quality of instruction their students receive.

Jonno White, Certified Working Genius Facilitator and bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out, works with school leadership teams to build the team culture, communication capacity, and leadership clarity to act on the ideas that the literacy and numeracy thought leaders above are advancing. For schools navigating the leadership dimensions of literacy and numeracy reform, email jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect.

Category 7: Government, Association, and Principal Advocates

These leaders shape the conditions under which Australian school leaders actually lead. They negotiate the professional environment, hold governments accountable, and represent the frontline experience of principals and teachers across the country.

37. Andy Mison

President, Australian Secondary Principals' Association (ASPA) | Australia 

Andy Mison is the national voice for secondary school principals on literacy and numeracy policy, funding, and equity. ASPA's response to the 2025 NAPLAN results was direct and substantive: Mison noted that NAPLAN "captures only a slice of student potential" and called for reform that addresses the structural inequities driving persistent achievement gaps rather than treating test results as if they can be improved in isolation from social conditions. His advocacy for a child-centred approach to reform frames literacy and numeracy improvement within a broader vision of what schooling is for.

ASPA's 2025 Policy Briefing, released following a national summit, reflects the most comprehensive principal-voice contribution to literacy and numeracy reform available for secondary leaders. Mison's combination of institutional authority and genuine school experience makes him a credible voice for secondary principals navigating the demands of national assessment and school improvement simultaneously.

38. Angela Falkenberg

President, Australian Primary Principals Association (APPA) | Australia 

Angela Falkenberg represents the primary principals who are at the very front of literacy and numeracy instruction, leading schools where the foundations for reading, writing, and numeracy are built or missed. APPA's 2025 position papers on literacy and numeracy reflect a primary school perspective that is often underrepresented in secondary-focused policy debates. Falkenberg's advocacy for educator resilience, trauma-informed leadership, and the specific pressures facing primary principals provides a human context for literacy reform that policy documents often strip away.

APPA's work under Falkenberg's leadership connects literacy and numeracy improvement with principal wellbeing, a connection that is practically important for school leaders trying to sustain long-term improvement work while managing the personal and professional pressures of school leadership.

39. Correna Haythorpe

Federal President, Australian Education Union (AEU) | Australia 

Correna Haythorpe is the most prominent advocate in Australia for the funding conditions that enable schools to achieve genuine literacy and numeracy improvement. Her campaign around the AEU's finding that only 1.3% of Australian public schools were funded to the Schooling Resource Standard in early 2024 has been central to the national funding debate. Haythorpe's position is that sustainable literacy and numeracy improvement requires adequate school funding, properly qualified and supported teachers, and reasonable workload conditions, none of which can be assumed in the current environment.

Her perspective on literacy and numeracy is systemic rather than instructional: she argues that the best teaching approaches in the world cannot overcome the structural disadvantage created by underfunding. School leaders operating in public school contexts will find Haythorpe's advocacy directly relevant to the resourcing constraints that shape what is actually possible in their schools.

40. Kristie O'Neill

Director, Literacy and Numeracy, NSW Department of Education | Australia 

Kristie O'Neill leads the team within the NSW Department of Education responsible for literacy and numeracy strategy, professional learning, and implementation support across the largest state school system in Australia. Her leadership of NSW Literacy and Numeracy Week, the rollout of evidence-based reading and numeracy guides for schools, and the transition to the mandatory Year 1 phonics check places her at the operational centre of how state-level literacy and numeracy policy becomes school-level reality.

O'Neill's role in developing the NSW reading, writing, and numeracy guides, practical and evidence-based resources for classroom teachers and school leaders, represents exactly the kind of system-level infrastructure that makes evidence-informed practice possible at scale. Her work is directly relevant to every NSW school leader and provides a useful benchmark for leaders in other states comparing their system's approach.

41. Dr Paul Wood

Executive Director, Teaching and Learning Support, NSW Department of Education | Australia 

Dr Paul Wood leads the NSW Department of Education's teaching and learning support function, which encompasses the professional development, curriculum resources, and instructional guidance that shape how literacy and numeracy are taught across NSW government schools. His role in the Literacy and Numeracy Week welcome signals his direct engagement with the state's primary strategy for improving student outcomes in foundational skills.

Wood's executive director role places him at the intersection of system strategy and school practice, responsible for ensuring that the research base for literacy and numeracy instruction is translated into professional learning that actually reaches teachers. His work is directly relevant to school leaders in NSW trying to understand what support and resources the system intends to provide.

Category 8: Practitioners, Coaches, and School-Facing Voices

These practitioners work alongside schools rather than from within them, delivering professional learning, coaching, and facilitation that helps leadership teams and teachers build literacy and numeracy improvement from the inside out.

42. Dr Simon Breakspear

Founder, Teaching Sprints | Australia 

Dr Simon Breakspear helps school leaders implement agile, low-burden instructional improvement models that fit into the reality of busy school calendars. Teaching Sprints, his flagship model, has gained significant traction in Australian and New Zealand schools as a practical framework for building teacher expertise in literacy and numeracy instruction without adding to an already overwhelming professional development burden. His LinkedIn is among the most active and substantive of any Australian education practitioner.

Breakspear's work on overcoming "reform fatigue" is particularly relevant for school leaders trying to build genuine literacy and numeracy improvement cultures in contexts where staff have experienced multiple failed initiatives. His framing of instructional improvement as incremental, evidence-informed, and collegially owned rather than top-down and compliance-driven gives school leaders a practical alternative to the change management approaches that have failed to shift practice in many schools.

43. Dan Haesler

Director, Cut Through Coaching | Australia 

Dan Haesler works with school leaders on performance, wellbeing, and psychological safety, addressing the emotional and relational dimensions of school leadership that determine whether literacy and numeracy improvement actually sticks. His coaching approach recognises that the best instructional approaches in the world will not be implemented effectively in schools where staff feel unsafe, unsupported, or unsure of what is expected of them.

Haesler's work on staff wellbeing and psychological safety is directly relevant to literacy and numeracy reform: the research consistently shows that teacher professional learning is most effective in contexts of professional trust, and that trust is a leadership responsibility. His LinkedIn posts on leadership psychology and the human dimensions of school improvement are among the most thoughtful in the Australian education space.

44. Gavin Grift

Director, Grift Education | Australia 

Gavin Grift is a leading voice in Australia on Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and the role of collaborative teacher inquiry in building literacy and numeracy improvement. His frameworks for middle leadership in schools and his work on building PLCs that sustain improvement beyond any single leader's tenure provide school leaders with a practical infrastructure for how shared professional learning in literacy and numeracy can become embedded in school culture rather than dependent on individual champions.

Grift's work connects the organisational development literature on collaborative cultures with the specific demands of instructional improvement in literacy and numeracy, providing school leaders with both the cultural frameworks and practical tools to build genuine school-wide improvement capacity.

45. Dr Danielle Colenbrander

Research Fellow, Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy, ACU | Australia 

Dr Danielle Colenbrander is a research fellow at ACU's ACAL whose work focuses on reading acquisition, morphological awareness, and reading difficulties. Her research on how children develop the ability to decode and understand morphologically complex words is directly relevant to the vocabulary and comprehension challenges that many Australian students face in the middle and upper primary years and beyond.

Colenbrander's laboratory research translates into classroom implications for how teachers can build students' morphological awareness as a complement to phonics instruction, addressing one of the key gaps in early literacy programs that stop at decoding without building the vocabulary and comprehension architecture that determines whether students become fluent, meaning-making readers.

46. Dr Sandra Knowles

Researcher and educator, Australian Council for Educational Research | Australia 

Dr Sandra Knowles is an educator and researcher at ACER whose work spans early years learning, numeracy instruction, and the practical translation of research into teacher professional learning. Her LinkedIn posts regularly connect numeracy research to the questions that classroom teachers and school leaders actually face, including how to make mathematics relevant and engaging for young learners and how to build the foundational number concepts that underpin later mathematical achievement.

Knowles represents the kind of researcher-practitioner at a major institution whose work bridges the gap between large-scale assessment data and the day-to-day instructional decisions that teachers make. Her engagement with educators across the Pacific, including visits to Fiji for educational quality work, gives her an international comparative perspective on what effective numeracy education looks like.

Category 9: Emerging and Future-Focused Voices

These voices represent important perspectives on where the literacy and numeracy field is heading in Australia and what school leaders will need to engage with in the years ahead.

47. Professor Rachel Wilson

Associate Professor, University of Sydney | Australia 

Professor Rachel Wilson is an important voice on educational assessment, program evaluation, and the equity implications of how literacy and numeracy funding and policy decisions are made in Australia. Her research on the structural inequities between public and private school resourcing has direct implications for the literacy and numeracy gap: schools serving disadvantaged communities consistently have fewer resources to invest in high-quality literacy and numeracy instruction.

Wilson's work provides a critical counterpoint to reform frameworks that focus exclusively on instructional approaches without addressing the resourcing inequities that shape what is possible. For school leaders working in disadvantaged community contexts, her research provides both validation of the challenges they face and evidence for the advocacy conversations they need to have with their systems.

48. Professor Glenn Savage

Professor of Education Futures, University of Melbourne | Australia 

Professor Glenn Savage is a leading policy sociologist whose analysis of equity, school systems, federalism, and education futures provides a macro-level frame for understanding why national literacy and numeracy reform unfolds the way it does. His 2025 observation that "forward-thinking educators are not waiting for permission but experimenting with new models" captures a dynamic in Australian education where the most effective schools are often moving faster than policy.

Savage's research on how national reforms actually impact local schools, the gap between policy intent and classroom reality, is directly relevant for school leaders trying to understand why top-down literacy and numeracy reform so often produces different results in different school contexts. His policy sociology lens provides a useful analytical frame for leaders who want to understand the politics of the reform environment they operate within.

49. Molly Chapman

Associate, Education Program, Grattan Institute | Australia 

Molly Chapman is an emerging education policy analyst at the Grattan Institute whose work on NAPLAN results and literacy and numeracy outcomes has gained visibility through her participation in Grattan's podcast discussions of the 2025 NAPLAN data. Her analysis of what the results reveal about the state of education in Australia and what schools and systems need to do to respond represents a rising voice in Australian education policy.

Chapman's focus on what the evidence says about supporting teachers and school leaders to put evidence-backed instruction into practice connects the macro-level policy conversation to the daily decisions that school leaders make. She represents the next generation of education policy thinkers whose work will shape the next decade of literacy and numeracy reform.

50. Dr Deborah Netolicky

Researcher, educator, and host of The Edu Salon podcast | Australia 

Dr Deborah Netolicky connects international education thought leadership with Australian and New Zealand practitioners through her podcast and writing, creating space for the kind of reflective, evidence-informed conversation about literacy, numeracy, and school improvement that busy school leaders rarely get in their daily work. The Edu Salon has featured some of the most important voices in international education, and her own research on teacher professional learning, school culture, and educational reform provides a rigorous frame for the conversations she facilitates.

Netolicky's contribution to the literacy and numeracy conversation is distinctive: she brings a research lens that is simultaneously intellectually demanding and deeply human, consistently asking not just what the evidence says but what it means for the people who teach and the people who are taught. Her work on the relationship between teacher professional identity and instructional quality is directly relevant for school leaders building literacy and numeracy cultures.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Several people were seriously considered for this list but were not included by editorial choice rather than any lack of relevance. Professor John Hattie of Visible Learning fame has shaped how an entire generation of Australian school leaders thinks about evidence and teaching effectiveness, but his work is so widely known and so thoroughly discussed elsewhere that a list specifically about literacy and numeracy thought leaders gains more value from directing readers to fresher voices. Professor Geoff Masters is listed above as an independent researcher following his ACER CEO tenure, but we also considered listing him in his ACER capacity, and his influence in either form is enormous. Professor Barry McGaw, co-chair of the 2020 NAPLAN Review alongside Bill Louden and Claire Wyatt-Smith, has retired from his most active policy roles and his contributions are primarily historical at this point.

Timothy Roberts of the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation has led important community-based literacy work for over 25 years, particularly with Indigenous and refugee communities, but the Foundation's current leadership profile is less publicly visible than others on this list. Several state-level literacy and numeracy directors from Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia were identified as genuinely influential but did not have sufficient public LinkedIn activity or published output to confirm their current roles and contributions with the sourcing standards this list requires.

Common Mistakes School Leaders Make When Engaging With Literacy and Numeracy Thought Leadership

The first mistake is treating the structured literacy debate as settled in one direction. The consensus that systematic phonics instruction is a necessary component of early reading instruction is now very strong. But the debate about whether phonics is sufficient, and about the role of vocabulary, oral language, comprehension, and disciplinary literacy in the full picture of what students need, remains genuinely open and important. Following only structured literacy advocates without engaging with the broader research community gives school leaders an incomplete picture.

The second mistake is confusing literacy with reading and numeracy with arithmetic. Many school leaders build reading programs while neglecting writing, or focus on number facts while neglecting mathematical reasoning. NAPLAN data consistently reveals weaknesses in writing and in proportional reasoning that phonics instruction and times-tables practice cannot address. The thought leaders on this list cover the full spectrum of what literacy and numeracy actually require, and school leaders who engage only with the slice most familiar to them miss the insights most likely to move the needle in their school.

The third mistake is treating research as a mandate rather than a starting point. The thought leaders on this list produce evidence about what works in general, and that evidence is important. But applying it well requires contextual knowledge, professional judgment, and the capacity to adapt approaches to the specific learners, community, and school culture a leader is working with. The researchers and practitioners on this list are not prescribing a single formula. They are expanding the evidence base from which good professional judgment can be made.

The fourth mistake is ignoring the equity dimension. Australia's literacy and numeracy challenge is not uniform. Students in disadvantaged communities, remote areas, and from Indigenous backgrounds face challenges that require both the best instructional approaches and the social and community conditions that make learning possible. Focusing only on instructional reform without addressing funding equity, school resourcing, and the social determinants of educational participation leaves the most important part of the problem unaddressed.

The fifth mistake is consuming thought leadership without connecting it to action. Following these 50 voices gives school leaders a richer and more evidence-grounded professional knowledge base. But knowledge alone does not change what happens in classrooms. The most valuable thing a school leader can do with this list is identify one or two voices whose work is directly relevant to their current school improvement priority, engage deeply with that work, and then facilitate the professional conversations that help their team translate research into practice.

Implementation Guide: Building Your Professional Knowledge in Literacy and Numeracy

The first step is to audit what you currently know. Most school leaders have strong knowledge in one domain, literacy or numeracy, and more limited engagement with the other. Use this list to identify the category where your own professional knowledge is thinnest and start there.

The second step is to build a short reading and following list from this directory. Three to five active LinkedIn voices who post regularly and substantively is more valuable than following fifty people whose posts you never engage with. Amy Haywood, Greg Ashman, Catherine Attard, and Nick Parkinson post regularly with content directly relevant to school leaders. Jenny Gore, Anne Castles, and Jordana Hunter post less frequently but with high-signal content when they do.

The third step is to connect what you read to your school's data. NAPLAN results, PAT scores, phonics check results, and teacher assessment data should be in conversation with the evidence these thought leaders are producing. When Grattan's Maths Guarantee reports that many Australian schools lack the whole-school curriculum coherence needed for consistent numeracy instruction, look at your own school and ask whether that describes you.

The fourth step is to bring your leadership team into the conversation. The most powerful professional learning happens when school leaders read the same research, have genuine discussions about what it means for their school, and make shared decisions about what to implement. Jonno White's Working Genius facilitation sessions and leadership workshops are specifically designed to help school leadership teams have exactly these kinds of high-quality collaborative conversations. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to discuss what that might look like for your team.

The fifth step is to engage with the organisations behind the voices. AERO, Grattan Institute, ACER, ACAL at ACU, and the major education associations all produce resources, podcasts, events, and professional learning opportunities that go far beyond what a social media follow can provide. The Grattan Institute's school leader guides for the Reading Guarantee and Maths Guarantee are free, evidence-based, and immediately actionable. AERO's science of reading introduction is one of the clearest available explanations of what the research actually says. These resources exist and are freely available.

The sixth step is to allocate protected time for professional learning. The single most consistent finding in research on effective school improvement is that genuine professional development requires protected time. Building that time into your school calendar is a leadership act. It signals that literacy and numeracy improvement is not just a policy requirement but a professional commitment. For more on building the leadership culture that makes sustained professional learning possible, see Jonno White's book Step Up or Step Out at https://www.amazon.com.au/Step-Up-Out-Difficult-Conflict/dp/B097X7B5LD.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the most influential literacy researchers in Australia right now?

In 2026, the most influential literacy researchers in Australia include Professor Anne Castles at ACU, whose ARC Laureate Fellowship on adolescent literacy is the largest current research investment in the field; Professor Jenny Gore at the University of Newcastle, whose Quality Teaching Rounds program has the strongest evidence base of any professional development model in the country; Professor Rauno Parrila and Professor Mary Ryan at ACU's Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy; and Jordana Hunter at McKinnon and Amy Haywood at Grattan, whose policy research has directly shaped what state and federal governments are doing to improve literacy outcomes. Dr Jennifer Buckingham at MultiLit and Lyn Stone are the most active structured literacy practitioner-researchers with direct school impact.

What is the science of reading and who is leading it in Australia?

The science of reading refers to decades of interdisciplinary research from cognitive science, linguistics, psychology, and educational neuroscience that converges on how children learn to read. The key finding is that reading is not natural, children must be explicitly taught how written code maps to spoken language, and systematic phonics instruction is the most reliable foundation for early reading. In Australia, the leading voices include Professor Anne Castles, Professor Rauno Parrila, Dr Jennifer Buckingham, Lyn Stone, Associate Professor Lorraine Hammond, Greg Ashman, and Toni Hatten-Roberts. The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) has published accessible introductions to the science of reading specifically designed for Australian school leaders and teachers.

How was this list compiled?

Every person on this list was selected on the basis of documented contribution to the literacy or numeracy conversation in Australia, active current engagement with the field, and genuine value for school leaders building their professional knowledge. The list was deliberately built to move past the most prominent household names and surface voices from across the research, policy, practice, and advocacy landscape. Geographic and disciplinary diversity were explicit criteria, with the goal of ensuring the list represents the full breadth of what literacy and numeracy education requires in Australia.

Can I hire someone to support my school leadership team with the literacy and numeracy challenges we face?

Absolutely. Jonno White, bestselling author of Step Up or Step Out with over 10,000 copies sold globally and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, works with school leadership teams to build the communication, team alignment, and leadership clarity needed to act effectively on evidence about literacy and numeracy. Many school leadership teams find that the challenge is not access to the right information but the leadership capacity to have the honest conversations, make clear decisions, and build the team culture that sustains implementation over time. Jonno works with schools and education organisations across Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the USA, and beyond. International travel is often far more affordable than organisations expect. Email jonno@consultclarity.org to start a conversation.

What are the most important resources for school leaders on literacy and numeracy?

The Grattan Institute's Reading Guarantee and Maths Guarantee reports, and their accompanying school leader guides, are among the most practically useful documents available for Australian school leaders. AERO's resources on evidence-based teaching, the science of reading, and multi-tiered support systems are freely available and directly applicable. ACER's Teacher magazine, which features high-quality research translation from across the field, is worth subscribing to. The ALEA journal for literacy educators and the AAMT publications are essential for leaders wanting to build their disciplinary knowledge in each domain.

What does the research say about what school leaders specifically should do to improve literacy and numeracy?

The research is clear on several points. Effective school leaders build whole-school instructional approaches rather than leaving literacy and numeracy instruction to individual teacher discretion. They invest in high-quality, sustained professional development rather than one-off workshops. They use assessment data, including NAPLAN, PAT assessments, and phonics check results, as genuine instructional information rather than accountability metrics. They build leadership team alignment around a shared understanding of what evidence-based teaching looks like. The Grattan Institute's work on curriculum coherence, AERO's multi-tiered support frameworks, and Jenny Gore's Quality Teaching Rounds research all converge on these findings.

Final Thoughts

The 50 people on this list represent the breadth and depth of genuine expertise shaping what Australian schools know and do about literacy and numeracy in 2026. They span research laboratories and school staffrooms, policy institutes and principal offices, structured literacy programs and Indigenous community schools. What they share is a commitment to the idea that every Australian student deserves to learn to read, write, and work with numbers with confidence and competence, and that achieving that goal requires serious, sustained, evidence-informed effort at every level of the education system.

If there is one insight that runs through the work of nearly every person on this list, it is this: improving literacy and numeracy outcomes at scale is not primarily a technology problem or a curriculum problem or a funding problem, though all of those matter. It is a leadership and professional learning problem. The gap between what the research says is possible and what happens in most Australian classrooms exists because of the decisions that are made, or not made, about how teachers are prepared, supported, and developed as professionals. The voices on this list are the people working hardest to close that gap.

For school leaders who want to build the leadership capacity to act on what those voices are saying, Jonno White works with leadership teams across Australia and internationally to build the team alignment, communication quality, and professional trust that makes sustained school improvement possible. His book Step Up or Step Out, with over 10,000 copies sold globally, provides a practical framework for the difficult conversations that every literacy and numeracy improvement journey eventually requires. Email jonno@consultclarity.org for a conversation about your school's specific needs. International travel is far more affordable than organisations typically expect.

For more on the broader school leadership context within which literacy and numeracy improvement happens, explore my blog post '50 Best Thought Leaders in Public Schooling in Australia and New Zealand (2026)' at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-public-schooling-australia-nz

For more on building the leadership development expertise your school needs, check out '31 Best Leadership Development Experts for Schools (2026)' at https://www.consultclarity.org/post/leadership-development-experts-schools

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Next Read: 50 Best Thought Leaders in Public Schooling in Australia and New Zealand (2026)

If you lead a public school in Australia or New Zealand, the voices you listen to shape how you think, plan, and respond to pressure. The right influences can sharpen your strategy, validate your instincts, or introduce a framework you had never considered. The wrong ones, or worse, no outside voices at all, leave you navigating some of the most complex leadership challenges in the world with only your own perspective to draw on.

Public schooling in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand sits at an extraordinary crossroads in 2026. Australia's Better and Fairer Schools Agreement has committed an estimated $16.5 billion in additional funding to public schools from 2025 to 2034, tying that investment to attendance, achievement, and completion reforms.

Keep reading: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-public-schooling-australia-nz