Australia’s Education System Isn’t Broken — It’s Built to Keep Certain Kids in Their Place

Australia loves to tell itself it’s a country of equal opportunity. We repeat it like a national mantra: if you work hard, if you “have a go,” you can build a good life. But anyone who grew up in a school like mine knows that’s not how it works. Opportunity in Australia isn’t evenly distributed. It’s rationed. And the rationing starts in the classroom.

I went to Bridgewater High in Hobart, a school where the bar wasn’t just low — it was underground. The message was clear from the moment you walked through the gates: don’t expect too much from your future. University wasn’t mentioned. Ambition wasn’t encouraged. Curiosity wasn’t nurtured. If you ended up in a job chiselling dry shit off porcelain public toilets, that was considered a perfectly acceptable outcome. That was the horizon we were given.

So that’s my point: Australia’s education system doesn’t fail by accident. It fails by design. It sorts kids by postcode, funnels them into predetermined futures, and calls it “education.”

Bridgewater wasn’t an anomaly. It was a product of a national culture that quietly decides which children deserve investment and which children don’t. In schools like mine, the expectation was survival, not success.

We didn’t learn history — not Australian history, not world history, not even the basics. We weren’t taught how political systems work, how economics shapes opportunity, or how media influences public opinion. We weren’t taught critical thinking, debate, or analysis. We were taught compliance, my classmates and I witnessed on more than one occasion, inappropriate behaviour from teachers.

Creativity was treated like a craft hobby. If you wanted to paint with acrylics or make a wobbly coffee table out of wood, that was “art and technology they called the woodwork component” But if your mind worked in ideas — writing, storytelling, conceptual thinking — you were on your own. Intelligence wasn’t nurtured; it was inconvenient.

When teachers were burnt out, under‑resourced, and unsupported, the pedagogy became yelling. Screaming. Public humiliation as classroom management. Not because they were bad people, but because the system gave them nothing else.

This is what low expectations look like in practice: a school that doesn’t believe its students will ever need to know anything beyond the basics. If you want to explore this dynamic further, you can look at low academic expectations or punitive school culture.

Mandatory school sport is often defended as character‑building or “just part of growing up in Australia.” But in reality, it’s a perfect symbol of how outdated and unimaginative our education system is. Not to mention dance was my thing so being made to participate in activities like medicine ball and running around an oval 5 times was something I had no interest in, I’m sorry – not sorry! how is running around an oval on a cold winter morning in Hobart meant to instil a passion of physical education and sport on a young person.

Sport was compulsory at Bridgewater, even though half the kids hated it, many felt unsafe, and some were humiliated weekly. It wasn’t about health — it was about conformity. It enforced a narrow idea of what a “normal Australian kid” looks like: competitive, physical, extroverted, obedient.

Sport became a sorting mechanism. The sporty kids were celebrated. The rest were tolerated. So, if you didn’t fit the mould – which I certainly did not, you learned early that your body, your temperament, your interests were wrong.

But sport is just one example. The real issue is that Australia’s education system still operates like it’s 1985 — rigid, masculine, unimaginative, and allergic to diversity. You can explore this through identity pressure or conformity culture.

Australia has some of the widest educational disparities in the OECD, for those of you who don’t know this is the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development which publishes global education comparisons through PISA — the Programme for International Student Assessment. Thus, meaning a child’s chances of finishing school, accessing university, or entering a professional field are still heavily shaped by where they grow up.

Schools in affluent suburbs teach critical thinking, humanities, languages, STEM pathways, and university preparation. Schools in disadvantaged areas teach compliance, basic literacy, and “life skills.” They prepare students for survival, not success.

Bridgewater wasn’t a failing school — it was doing exactly what the system expected it to do.

That my friends is the political scandal nobody wants to talk about: Australia doesn’t have one education system. It has two. Which pisses me off to no end, that a postcode can influence a child’s future. One for the children of professionals, and one for the children of battlers. One that cultivates ambition, and one that suppresses it. One that teaches students how the world works, and one that teaches them how to accept it.

Australia’s education system is terrified of creativity — real creativity. Creativity requires imagination, risk, experimentation, and the freedom to fail. It requires teachers who aren’t drowning in administrative overload. It requires a curriculum that values ideas.

But in schools like mine, creativity was reduced to hobbies. We weren’t taught how to draft essays, analyse texts, or build arguments. We weren’t taught how to express ourselves. We weren’t taught how to think. We were taught how to behave, not very well I might add, and when you teach behaviour instead of thinking, you don’t produce citizens. You produce workers.

This is why exploring creativity suppression can deepen the argument even further.

This isn’t just an education issue — it’s a political one. A population that hasn’t been taught history is easier to manipulate. A population that hasn’t been taught critical thinking is easier to distract. A population that hasn’t been taught ambition is easier to pacify. A population that hasn’t been taught creativity is easier to control.

Australia’s education system doesn’t just fail students — it fails democracy. When you grow up in a school that doesn’t expect anything from you, you learn not to expect anything from the country. You learn that your voice doesn’t matter. You learn that your future is predetermined. You learn that ambition is for other people. I knew myself before the end of grade ten I sure as hell was not going to be one of these people so my other point here on how inequality becomes cultural, not just economic.

Growing up in a school that doesn’t expect anything from you shapes your identity in ways that last decades. You learn to shrink yourself. You learn to avoid risk. You learn to distrust your own intelligence. You learn that dreaming is dangerous because it leads to disappointment.

You learn that ambition is embarrassing, I remember being mocked by a particular teacher.

You learn that curiosity is pointless.

You learn that your future is something that happens to you, not something you build.

When you finally escape that environment — through luck, stubbornness, or sheer force of will — you realise how much you were never taught. You realise how much you had to teach yourself. You realise how much potential was wasted, not just in you, but in every kid who sat in those classrooms. Since the end of 1996 when I finished my education in Tasmania completing grade 12, I honesty had no real education, Everything I leant was from lived experience and when I look back, Most of my education is from my own inquisitiveness and thirst for knowledge.

This is why the system feels so political: it shapes citizens before they even know what citizenship means.

Now let’s talk about the teachers. It’s easy to blame teachers, but the truth is they’re victims of the same system. They’re expected to be social workers, counsellors, disciplinarians, administrators, and educators all at once. They’re given outdated curricula, impossible workloads, and minimal support.

Burnout becomes inevitable. Yelling becomes a coping mechanism. Creativity becomes a luxury. And students become collateral damage. One of my dearest and oldest friends who I went to Highchool with all those years ago is now a teacher. I was disgusted to hear how she has experiences where parents have threatened her and the expectations the education pass onto her and her peers is disgraceful sand disgusting.

If Australia wants better outcomes, it needs to invest in teachers — not punish them for failing in a system designed to make them fail. If Australia wants to be the country it claims to be — fair, ambitious, forward‑thinking — then it needs an education system that reflects those values.

That means:

• Real humanities education — history, politics, philosophy, media literacy.
• Valuing creativity — writing, design, critical analysis, storytelling.
• Expecting excellence from every postcode — not just wealthy ones.
• Ending punitive teaching cultures — replacing yelling with emotional literacy.
• Offering diverse physical activity — not just compulsory sport.
• Investing in teachers — not burning them out.
• Building pathways to university and trades — not funnelling kids into low‑skill jobs.
• Teaching critical thinking — not compliance.
• Supporting identity development — not enforcing conformity.
• Creating national standards that don’t depend on postcode — because talent isn’t geographically distributed.

Australia needs an education system that believes in its students — all of them.

I decided to write this piece Because I’m tired of watching governments talk about “education reform” while ignoring the real issue: the system is built to keep the bar low for certain kids. and I was one of them, unfortunate I had a taste of good quality schools before I started high school but that’s a whole different story of how I came to be in this situation.

I wasn’t expected to become a writer. I wasn’t expected to build a career. I wasn’t expected to think deeply or question anything. I wasn’t expected to have a future beyond whatever job I could get at 17. My first job was when I was 16, I was a kitchen hand on weekends at a well-known hotel in Salamanca, I gained this opportunity through work experience, so this was a good thing, but the bar was also exceptionally low. I have now calculated I have been in the workforce now 31 years now. In that time, I have excelled and leant and have had some amazing opportunities all of which I did on my own, it was my grit and determination which made me get to where I am and high school certainly did not contribute in where I am now.

I am also writing this for the kids who are still in schools like Bridgewater — kids who deserve more than acrylic paint, wooden coffee tables, and a curriculum that teaches them nothing about the world they’re about to enter. For the record Bridgewater High School, was incinerated to the ground in October 2007, the never caught the bastards. Arsonists you see, I was sad at all hearing the news I actually was happy now that the high school I went to and had to endure was now a pile of ashes and rubble so to me it was symbolic and long overdue.

Australia can do better. Australia must do better. And it starts by admitting the truth: the education system isn’t broken — it’s working exactly as designed.