Educators from across Australia and across the education sectors came together in late 2025, hosted by the University of Sydney in its ‘Castlereagh St’ campus – to discuss the state of AI in education in Australia.
The resulting Castlereagh Statement which came out of that meeting has recently been released.
The statement is a cross-sector call to action which argues that Australia’s education and training sectors must urgently adapt to the realities of artificial intelligence (AI), and that many aspects of our current systems (designed for a world where information was scarce) may no longer be fit for purpose in today’s era where AI can perform many tasks requiring human cognition.
While Australia has strong expertise and innovation across our education sectors, and also some of the leading thinkers, practitioners and researchers on AI in education; collectively across our schools, VET, higher education and lifelong learning providers our responses to AI thus far have often been fragmented and uncoordinated. This in turn creates risks for learners, employers, and for national productivity.
At the heart of the Statement are three overarching goals:
- A shared definition of what we value in human educators and learners, and aligned measurement systems to support these
- Coherent and scaffolded learning pathways from early childhood to lifelong learners, aligned with societal needs, and
- Every Australian being capable of confidently, critically, and creatively engaging with AI.
For the VET sector, these goals reinforce a need to shift beyond a narrow ‘competency-only’ approach to AI, and instead towards educators also thinking through broader capabilities such as adaptability, judgement, and learning-to-learn.
The Statement outlines six foundational principles to guide reform, all of which have direct implications for VET. They are:
- Redefining the educated, future-ready Australian
- Institutional and individual humility
- Reconceptualising learning and assessment
- Designing an agile and capability-focused curriculum
- Empowering teachers and redefining teaching
- Placing technology in service of pedagogy and trust
To turn these ideas into actions, the report proposes a three-stage reform pathway with some common actions which could be taken across all sectors (including a “national coordinating and enabling body” to lead the work).
The appendix of the report also contains sector-specific ideas for the short, medium and longer-term.
In the short term, for VET specifically, they includes ideas such as:
- Communicating that responding to AI is a key priority
- The regulators coming together to issue joint guidance to VET providers on assessment integrity
- Piloting lessons from industry – e.g. making better use of the industry insights from mature-age VET students returning to VET to upskill but who already use AI in their workplaces
- National pilots of AI tools to improve RPL
- Continuing to progress VET Qualifications Reforms and the Future Skills Organisations’ AI pilots
- Uplifting the digital fluency and AI capability amongst teachers
- Continuing to expand the TAFE Technology Fund.
VDC News’ ghost writer was involved in developing the Castlereagh Statement and is a signatory to it. The work was led by Prof. Danny Liu (University of Sydney), Prof. Jason Lodge (University of Queensland), and Katie Ford (Microsoft).
