Approach
Understand exactly where your school stands. Then, where you want it, act on what we find.
Every engagement starts with the Review, a data-informed diagnostic of the whole school, benchmarked four ways. It returns a prioritised, sized set of improvement opportunities your team can act on directly. Most schools do exactly that. Where you would rather have support capturing one, we design the solution and help you put it in place.
01 · Always
Understand where you stand
A fixed-scope diagnostic of the whole school. Your own performance data, benchmarked four ways, with every driver rated for the size of the improvement opportunity it holds.
You leave with a benchmarked view of your position and a prioritised set of opportunities, each sized, specific enough for your team to act on without us.
The Review · From $4,900 + GST
02 · If you want support
OptionalAct on what we find
Where you would rather not tackle an opportunity alone, it becomes a discrete, scoped project: the underlying issue understood properly, a solution built for your context, and a plan we can help you manage.
You leave with real cost savings, revenue growth, or operational improvement, scoped to target five times what the project costs.
Solution design and impact · From $30,000 + GST
Start here
The Review
A fixed-scope diagnostic that benchmarks your school four ways. Against your own trend over time, to show whether the direction of travel is improving or deteriorating. Against your local competitors, for a real picture of how you compare in your actual market. Against similar schools nationally, matched on enrolment, ICSEA, location, level, and sector. And against the other schools in your own network, where that applies. We rate the underlying drivers and surface the opportunities with the greatest room for improvement, each sized for potential financial impact. The findings are designed to be acted on by your team directly: prioritised, sized, and specific enough to take forward yourselves.
See what's inside a ReviewWhat you get
A benchmarked view of your position
against your own trend, your local market, comparable schools nationally, and the other schools in your network.
Improvement opportunities you can act on
every driver of enrolment, revenue, cost and workforce rated for the size of the opportunity it holds, prioritised and sized in dollars.
Recommendations specific enough to take forward
what to do about each, in enough detail for your team to start without us.
The impact
Clarity on where your improvement opportunities are, how much each is worth, and which of them to act on first.
From $4,900 + GST
(single school). Network Reviews are scoped to the system.
Talk with usScoped project
OptionalSolution design and impact
Most schools take the Review's opportunities and act on them themselves, and that is what the Review is built for. Where an opportunity is complex, politically difficult, or simply not something you want to take on alongside running a school, we take it on as a discrete, scoped project. You choose which ones, and how many. Each runs as its own workstream, so improvement starts early rather than waiting on one large program to complete.
See how a scoped project runsWhat you get
A detailed understanding of what is driving the opportunity
not the presenting symptom, the cause underneath it.
A solution designed for your context
built from commercial strategies proven to work in comparable schools and settings, adapted to your size, sector and market.
A plan that is straightforward to implement
sequenced, owned and measurable, and which we can manage with you through delivery.
The impact
Real cost savings, revenue increase, or operational improvement. We scope each project to target five times what it costs: on a $30,000 project, more than $150,000.
From $30,000 + GST
Scoped to your priorities and quoted by negotiation.
Talk with usContinuing partnership
OptionalOngoing advisory
For schools and systems that want the strategic capability most do not hold in-house, on a continuing basis rather than project by project. A retainer gives you a standing strategic partner: someone who already knows your data, your comparator sets and your board, and who is available for the decisions that fall between projects.
What you get
Quarterly strategic reviews
against your own trend and your comparator sets, so the direction of travel stays visible.
Board and leadership support
through the decisions that matter, with the analysis already in hand.
Oversight of implementation
on the work already under way, so momentum does not depend on us being re-engaged.
From $3,000 per month
for a school. From $8,000 per month for a system.
Talk with usA de-risked investment model
We back our own recommendations. A meaningful share of the fee is contingent on the agreed impact metrics being met, agreed with you at the outset, and it isn't enough for the work to simply be delivered. Those metrics need to show a clearly positive trajectory well before the full benefit is realised.
We scope every project to target five times its cost. Three times is the floor.
“If we don't believe a solution will return at least three times its cost, we won't pursue the work.”
How we work
The people you meet do the work
every engagement is led and delivered by people who have run schools and systems, and built and operated commercial ventures, over decades. They scope the work, they do the analysis, and they are in the room when the findings go to your board.
Fast enough to still be true
four weeks from the day we receive your data. One half-day with your leadership team, one data pack, and nothing else asked of your staff. Analysis that takes a year describes a school you no longer have, and decisions get made in the meantime regardless.
Evidence before opinion
every recommendation traces back to data: ours, yours, or published.
We work alongside your team, not around it
you end the engagement with the capability, not just the document. You keep the benchmarking model with your own comparator sets built into it, so your team can re-run the analysis next year without us, and we walk your leadership through the drivers rather than presenting conclusions at them.
Judged on what changes, not what we recommend
ideas are the easy part. We scope to a measurable result, agree the metrics with you at the outset, and put a meaningful share of our fee behind them.
Deliberately bounded
we go deep on the operating side of a school, enrolment, revenue, cost and workforce, because depth there is what produces findings you can act on. Curriculum, pedagogy, professional development and culture we leave to you, because you know your school better than we will.
Benchmarks built for this sector, not borrowed from another
Our funding-and-surplus model covers more than 2,500 non-government schools across Australia, calibrated against actual My School financial data. It underpins every financial and network benchmark we produce. Alongside it sits live national teacher vacancy data from Teacher Passport, across every sector and state, updated continuously rather than surveyed once a year. Both sit on top of ACARA school profiles and My School, so every engagement starts from facts specific to this sector.
Vacancy pressure peaks exactly when schools are recruiting for the following year
National teacher vacancy index, indexed to January = 100, all sectors and states
So what
+42%
October vacancies vs January
Schools that start recruiting for the following year in Term 4 are competing in the tightest market of the year. The schools that move in June advertise into a market with roughly a third fewer competing vacancies: the same role, far less competition.
Source: Teacher Passport live vacancy data, all sectors and states.
| Month | Index |
|---|---|
| Jan | 100 |
| Feb | 108 |
| Mar | 121 |
| Apr | 117 |
| May | 109 |
| Jun | 96 |
| Jul | 112 |
| Aug | 128 |
| Sep | 134 |
| Oct | 142 |
| Nov | 138 |
| Dec | 119 |