The ACT's new education minister says principals should not have been surprised to see changes to their budgets as the Education Directorate follows through on the recommendations from the school resourcing review.
The review found resources should be distributed more equitably across the system with additional funding for students who need more support to participate in school.
Under a new budget model, 18 public schools and one public college will have a significant cut in their funding beyond the normal yearly fluctuations of 5 per cent.
Education Minister Rachel Stephen-Smith said some schools will notice the drop in their budgets from next year.
"Certainly, there's no point doing a big review like the school resourcing review, and then not taking on board the recommendations and findings. And it was pretty clear that we needed to restructure resourcing to be more equitable across the system.
"And while we put in an additional $40 million ... that reallocation of resourcing was quite an explicit recommendation of that review, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone that there was going to be a level of reallocation."
The Deputy Chief Minister had her pick of portfolios following Yvette Berry's resignation from the cabinet.
Ms Stephen-Smith says she has always been interested in education policy and was one of the reasons she joined the Labor Party.
"My motivation is about ensuring that every public school can be an excellent first choice for every family," she said.
"If we don't have socioeconomically advantaged families choosing to send their children to public schools, we will not have a representative, diverse student body in our public education system. We will not have the buy-in to public education that I think that we need."
But public school enrolments have gone backwards for five years in a row in the territory with more families opting for Catholic and independent schools.
Two recent reports go to the heart of why some families are turning away from public education: the inquiry into literacy and numeracy performance and the ACT public school system resourcing review.
The former inquiry led to the Strong Foundations reforms focusing on evidence-based teaching starting in the early primary school years.
The resourcing review declared the days of school autonomy were over and that the ACT would work towards one public education system.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has also made it clear that federal funding for public schools comes with strings attached - that is there must be an effort to ensure evidence-based practices are in every Australian classroom.
With reforms under way, Ms Stephen-Smith said it was an exciting time to be coming into the education portfolio.
"The fact that the Commonwealth and [state] education ministers are focused on [evidence-based teaching] rather than using those forums to fight the culture wars... it's a very exciting time."
Ms Stephen-Smith openly says she is not an expert in education but she has followed the debate over recent years sparked by the Catholic system's Catalyst program about realigning teaching with what evidence says about how children learn to read.
She recently met the Australian Education Research Organisation and said a lot of the evidence makes sense to her.
"I come at it ... not from an ideological perspective in either, it's all about explicit instruction, or you know, it's all about inquiry-based learning. ... I think the evidence would demonstrate that both explicit instruction and inquiry-based learning have their place."
The education minister is still getting up to speed with where the Strong Foundations reforms are at in the third year of the rollout.
Mr Clare said Australia should look towards the UK, where phonics was mandated in schools in 2006 and a year 1 phonics check was introduced in 2012.
In the 2025 PISA results, the UK jumped up the rankings three places in reading, four places in maths and seven places in science. Australian students were above the OECD average but reading and maths scores have declined over the past two decades.
While the UK began its reforms 20 years ago compared to the ACT's start three years ago, Ms Stephen-Smith says the territory could make swift progress.
"I think we can do ... a lot more quickly in the ACT than in the whole of the UK and we're starting from a strong base. In the very first year that we've done the phonics testing for year one students ... we're starting from a significantly higher level than in some of the other [states]," she said.
"We need to make sure that we continue to build on that, and then and for those children who haven't had that background, that we are providing them with the evidence-based teaching and the catch-up where that's required to ensure that by the time they get to the next few years of primary school and transitioning into high school, that they are not behind and and that they have every opportunity to thrive in their secondary education and beyond."
The school resourcing review declared a generational shift was needed to move away from a system of school autonomy towards "one public education system".
In response to the review's recommendations, the Education Directorate has flagged it will be more proactive in moving more experienced teachers to areas where they are most needed.
Ms Stephen-Smith said there are more opportunities for consistency between schools in their approach to behaviour management.
"One of the challenges we have, and this comes back to the one public education system reform, is that while we have broadly a commitment to positive behaviours for learning, we have probably 93 different ways of implementing that commitment across our education system.
"And that means a lot of time and effort from principals, school leaders, and teachers around how to implement positive behaviours for learning in the way that their school is doing it. So trying to build more consistency across the education system to support teachers and school leaders and principals with the resources at the system level, rather than having every school develop their own approach."
Ms Stephen-Smith said she was "really pleased" when the mobile phone ban in schools came into effect.
While NSW is putting in more controls around screen time in schools and take-home assessments in response to artificial intelligence academic integrity concerns, the ACT education minister will defer to experts on how technology should be integrated into schools.
Amid pay negotiations with the teachers union, Ms Stephen-Smith said she is keen to get out to more schools to see what's happening at the chalkface.
"Our schools are stronger when we have a diversity of students and families engaged, and a diversity of experience, and parents who are engaged in the in ensuring that the school is an excellent school.
"I want to get out not only and meet the teachers and the children and young people, but also to meet the P and Cs across our school system and understand what they're seeing on the ground as well."
