Here are five key takeaways from the K-12 leadership roundtable at this year’s PIE High Asia Pacific conference:
1. Agents are partners, not pipelines
Michelle Waters, head of international admissions & collaborations at St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School, was crystal clear that relationships with representatives live or die on trust and openness. She stressed the importance of proactive, human contact instead of simply transactional e-mails.
“I’ve discovered in this role to be very truthful and upfront … saying, ‘Hey, I’ve heard this is happening– can we speak about that?'”
Her team hosts representative morning teas, welcomes representatives onto school, and sends routine photos and files to help them inform the school’s story. The message: if you want quality trainees, you need quality relationships.2.
Instructor shortages could reshape what development appears like
For Helensvale State High School principal Rachel Cutajar teaching is “the greatest task in the world”– but right now “is not really being able to be hired extremely well”.
She kept in mind that this truth is making decisions about global enrolments “extremely real” for schools as they work to support both domestic and global students.
Cutajar framed this not as a reason to draw back from global education, but as a suggestion that any growth needs to be practical about teacher supply and concentrated on maintaining a high‑quality experience for each trainee.3.
Health and wellbeing, “concealed baggage” and the truth of global school neighborhoods
Principals also indicated mental health as a growing pressure point. They explained “extremely brave” youths travelling around the world without family, but schools are discovering “covert luggage” only when trainees are on school and struggling.
Cultural stigma, fears about disclosure and irregular information streams between households, representatives and schools all play a role. The reaction from leaders is to deepen pastoral care, tighten up expectations with partners and ensure assistance structures are robust enough for the realities these days’s accomplices.
At John Paul College, primary Craig Merritt argued that schools likewise need to move beyond an easy “domestic vs global” lens when they speak about student needs, pointing instead to the “breadth and complexity” of a community where more than half of households have a language background aside from English.4.
Transnational education opens up– and partnerships move centre phase
While public schools have actually had a path for TNE for a long time, Queensland independent schools only received the “rubber stamp” from mid‑June to provide offshore, noted Michael Bos, director of global at the Moreton Bay Colleges.
“This provides a great deal of opportunities for us now, which is wonderful … however undoubtedly, we lag a great deal of the other states, we lag a lot of other nations too,” stated Bos.
The chance is substantial– however Michael cautioned it depends upon choosing the ideal overseas partners who comprehend both their own regulatory structures and Queensland’s.
On the topic of collaborations, Brisbane Boys’ College headmaster Andre Casson argued for much deeper partnerships closer to home, suggesting Southeast Queensland universities ought to be true partners for schools, giving global households clear, high‑quality post‑school paths in the region.5.
Global competitors is real– and worldwide trainees understand their options
A.B. Paterson College primary Joanne Sheehy warned that international families aren’t simply comparing one Australian school with another– they are weighing up extremely various education systems worldwide.
After going to schools in Singapore, Shanghai, Vietnam, the Emirates and the UK, she said she has seen first‑hand how quickly some abroad schools are altering their teaching and learning, and how “articulate” global trainees are about their expectations.
If the experience available feels out of action with what trainees might get in other places, Sheehy suggested they might merely choose they are “not getting value for cash” and “go somewhere that it is”. For her, that’s a call for school leaders to lean into change, not pull back from it, and to guarantee their classrooms show the type of future their trainees are in fact heading into.
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