Beaming with relief and self-declared optimism, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in his election night victory speech talked up his government’s commitment to building a future for all Australians.  Invoking signature Labor agendas, he lifted the crowd with the language of “fairness, aspirations and opportunity for all”, of striving “for futures that bring us together” with “new hope” and with “no-one left behind”.

In case the message slipped us by, the Prime Minister reminded again that “fairness, equality and respect for one another” were foundational. 

Picking up the cues, commentators were quick to describe Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s campaign as backward looking, pessimistic, worried and grievance-driven. The Labor Party and Albanese were positioned as forward looking, builders, practical, offering hope and a sense of optimism for the future.

It is possible I missed some of these more elevated dimensions of the Labor campaign but in any case, Labor’s victory is being put into history and characterised by such promises and the next term of government set up to deliver on them.

All about the future

It shouldn’t need to be said, but it clearly does. Education is fundamental to realising these promises about the future. Education is all about the future, about better worlds and times and opportunities to come, as so many of us can bang on about.

Yet where was education during the campaign? How can we ensure it is in prime position for the incoming government?

Once a trademark Labor platform item, proud and prominent in the Labor policy handbook (and not just for Whitlam), education was largely absent as a priority during the campaign, across the board. It was there in the ALP platform for 2025 but the brief education section ranged from childcare to tertiary education with an emphasis on small economic adjustments rather than big visions.

Instead of offering a coherent and compelling agenda for urgently needed reform and a vision for change – in all sectors – the electorate was offered piecemeal policy, bits and pieces of things scattered here and there. We didn’t even get the usual clever country, knowledge economy slogans of past elections.

Schooling barely registered

On the upside, Labor pushed free TAFE, a one-off 20% reduction in HECs debt and, from time-to time, mentioned early childhood education and care. Schooling barely registering in the campaign messaging, despite the ALP platform promising better and fairer funding for our public schools. This is even more alarming given that Jason Clare, Minister for Education, was also Labor’s election spokesperson. When higher education was noted, it was more likely to be indirectly via the nexus of international students, immigration and housing – a budget problem, not a national strength.

As Stephen Matchett writing in Future Campus observed, “Never has the low ebb of social licence [for higher education] and lack of electoral pull been more evident.” In the final week, the Opposition somewhat predictably tried to reignite the curriculum culture wars, a feeble effort to resuscitate the old ambition for MPs to direct curriculum content towards a more nationalistic and ideologically preferred focus, displaying not only a naïve grasp of how curriculum policy making actually works in this country but also showing how out of touch they were with the mood. How last-decade, if not last century, these protestations sounded.

What’s on the horizon

So, what’s on the horizon for education in the next three years and more? In the lead up to the Federal election the Australian Association for Research in Education issued a statement outlining five election priorities for education: 1) Boosting the education workforce: 2) Research informed policy; 3) Connected solutions; 4) Equity and educational outcomes; 5) Widening participation and nurturing aspirations. For each day last week, expert education researchers provided evidence-rich commentary on these issues, diagnosing the challenges for sure, but also offering ways forward, outlining powerful directions for reform and spelling out concrete and practical suggestions for change, building on what the research already shows.

These blog posts also highlight some of the major sticking points, the issues on which governments continue to stumble or default, despite all that is known from the research. For example, given all the talk about hope and aspirations in the immediate aftermath of the election, Marnee Shay’s blogpost provided a salutary view onto the differential and uneven opportunities available for hopefulness. Reflecting that “hope alone isn’t enough”, she argues for a more research-informed “policy focus on these cohorts who face layers of external challenges and who need robust schooling provision to create [accessible] pathways”.

What have we learned over 50 years?

In the case of equity and child poverty, Pat Thomson reminds us of findings from more than 50 years of research on poverty and its relation to education inequality. How many times does this need to be rediscovered? Looking to a hypothetical national review of child poverty and education, Thomson outlines seven key propositions that could guide such work, each based on a substantial volume of evidence gathered over many decades. These seven propositions themselves provide an initial road map for future policy reform and for a program of work that could genuinely tackle disadvantage not simply rehearse what we know about documented patterns.

This is the type of synthesis of research needed to take the rhetoric of building aspirations beyond feel-good talk to deliver actual change. And the type of research being drawn upon matters. As Penny Van Bergen argued in her blogpost on the valuing of different types of expert voices, “Effective policymaking must consider how research-informed insights from different disciplines informing education knit together” . The careful evaluation and bringing together of different types of research evidence is a crucial part of the policy informing process, yet one that can be all too easily missed in the rush to be heard.

This is the time to elevate education as a national priority

There is no lack of self-proclaimed experts on education and schools, as Nicole Mockler observed in her blogpost on the teaching workforce. Simply holding a strong opinion or having been to school does not really meet the threshold. Nor does selectively reading the research, cherry picking the data, ignoring contrary findings or foreclosing on whole fields of education research. Education advocacy is a crowded and noisy field, with thinktanks, consultants, lobbyists, national research organisations such as AERO, all part of the mix vying for influence in the political realm and in public discourse. But the quality and rigour of the research that is heard and listened to matters.

For a resoundingly re-elected government, heading into a new term with ambitious commitments to building fairer futures and lifting aspirations, this is the time for education to be elevated as a national priority, to be a defining feature of the coming years – not just bits and pieces of help to make different stages of the education journey more affordable but to deliver on bigger and more systematic reform.

High quality education research, examples of which the blogposts have showcased, must drive these agendas, it must be listened to and acted upon if the ambitions for change are to be met.  It is equally critical for education researchers not to wait around to be listened to, but to seize the space and time this moment offers.

Julie McLeod is professor of curriculum, equity and social change in the Faculty of Education and from 2017 to 2023 was Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research Capability) at the University of Melbourne. Her research is in the history and sociology of education, with a focus on youth, gender, inequality and educational reform, and particular interests in histories of educational ideas and qualitative methodologies . She is the immediate past president of AARE.