How do systems change? Five truths for anyone shaping education
What really drives long-term improvement in education systems? ThirdStory CEO Keren Caple shares five truths about how change happens.
This week offered two reminders of what truly drives improvement in education systems.
The OECD’s TALIS 2024 results highlighted the factors that keep teachers in the profession: meaningful collaboration, professional autonomy, supportive leadership, and time to continue to grow professionally in order to do their work well.
And World Teachers’ Day 2025, with its theme “Recasting teaching as a collaborative profession,” echoed the same message; that when teachers work and learn together, they stay, grow, and innovate.
For more than two decades I’ve worked on education change and transformation at school, system, and national levels (both in Australia and internationally). Across every context, one lesson stands firm: lasting reform doesn’t happen through command and control. It happens when those closest to learners have the capability, agency, and capacity to lead change themselves.
So, at the risk of oversimplifying a complex challenge, here are five truths I wish every politician, policymaker and senior official understood about change:
You can’t drive reform from the centre and expect it to stick. Sustainable improvement grows through shared ownership and distributed leadership.
Agency matters more than compliance. When teachers feel heard, trusted, and skilled, they invest their energy in making things better.
Time is the currency of transformation. Without protected time for learning, reflection, and collaboration, no initiative will take root.
Culture outlasts policy. Trust, transparency, and consistency are harder to build than new programs, but they are what sustain them.
Iterate, don’t impose. The systems that succeed learn fast, adapt often, and scale what works.
If we want schools that continuously improve and students who thrive, we must recast teaching (and leading) as collaborative, adaptive, and deeply human work.
Truth #1: You can’t drive reform from the centre and expect it to stick.
Ontario and Barbados both learned this the hard way, and then got it right.
Ontario’s Literacy and Numeracy Strategy didn’t improve results because the central office tightened control. It worked because schools were trusted to lead change within a clear shared purpose. Student achievement rose by more than 10 percentage points across the decade, and the culture of collaboration outlasted governments.
In Barbados, the shift to school-based improvement planning gave principals and teachers real say in how resources were used and delivered measurable gains in literacy and attendance.
The impact: Student outcomes improved, teacher morale lifted, and reforms sustained because ownership sat where the work happens.
The lesson: Reform sticks when purpose is shared, but power is distributed.
Truth #2: Agency matters more than compliance.
Aotearoa New Zealand’s Māori-medium education movement and High Tech High in the US are worlds apart, yet both prove the same point.
In Kura kaupapa Māori schools, teachers reclaimed agency over curriculum and pedagogy, aligning learning with culture and community. Māori student achievement and engagement improved markedly, narrowing long-standing gaps.
At High Tech High, teacher-designed, project-based learning replaced standardised compliance. The result? Higher graduation and university entrance rates than state averages - particularly for historically underrepresented students.
The impact: Where teachers have professional agency, students experience deeper learning, higher equity, and greater belonging.
The lesson: Compliance may secure alignment, but agency builds commitment, and commitment drives improvement.
Truth #3: Time is the currency of transformation.
Finland and The Bahamas show what happens when time is treated as an investment, not a cost.
In Finland, teachers spend up to 30% of their week in professional collaboration, planning, and inquiry. This deliberate structure has supported one of the world’s most trusted and effective education systems, with high outcomes and low teacher attrition.
When The Bahamas piloted structured release time for professional learning communities, schools saw stronger teacher retention and improved literacy growth, particularly in lower-performing primary schools.
The impact: When teachers have time to learn and reflect together, both professional satisfaction and student outcomes rise.
The lesson: If time is the currency of transformation, systems must budget for it.
Truth #4: Culture outlasts policy.
Samoa and Victoria (Australia) both prove that deep cultural foundations sustain improvement long after policies change.
In Samoa, embedding fa’asamoa, cultural values of respect, reciprocity, and service, in teacher training has improved retention, community trust, and student engagement, especially in rural schools.
In Victoria, schools like Warringa Park have maintained world-class inclusive education through multiple leadership transitions because their culture of inclusion runs deeper than any policy document.
The impact: When values and relationships anchor the work, change becomes self-sustaining — not dependent on leadership turnover or political cycles.
The lesson: Programs come and go. Culture endures, and that’s where improvement lives.
Truth #5: Iterate, don’t impose.
Curaçao shows that lasting improvement is learned, not launched.
Curaçao introduced bilingual education through small pilots, refined practice through teacher-led research, and scaled once results were clear. Students in pilot schools achieved higher literacy in both languages and greater engagement across subjects.
The impact: Pilot, learn, scale. Students thrive because systems adapt to evidence, not ideology.
The lesson: Improvement isn’t a single reform, it’s a habit of disciplined experimentation.
The messy (but crucial) work of change
At ThirdStory, we work with education systems around the world to co-design and support change initiatives in partnership with educators, policymakers, experts, young people and their families and the wider community.
We work with systems to develop ambitious new strategy, collaborate within and across ecosystems to develop a clear vision, case for change and roadmaps for moving forward in complex contexts.
We also support the implementation of new initiatives and walk alongside partners through large scale, systems changing, transformations. This can include side-by-side coaching, facilitating implementation structures, and supporting coordinated learning across interconnected activities. We are known for our work in assessing and working with systems conditions, changing mindsets in the face of resistance, and coordinating complex programs of action.
Get in touch to find out how we can support you to make lasting system-level change.
Keren Caple Chief Executive Officer