The Department of Education is committed to giving all children a strong start and empowering students to realise their full potential. At the heart of this commitment lies our dedication to delivering quality teaching, driving improved educational outcomes, and fostering inclusive practices—because every student, regardless of their background or circumstances, deserves the opportunity to thrive.
The transformative benefits of an early childhood education lay the foundations for a bright future. In 2024–25, the free kindy program continued to expand and gain momentum, offering quality early learning in the year before Prep while also providing much-needed cost of living relief to families across Queensland.
Our commitment to early childhood education focused not only on expanding access, but also on ensuring a safe environment and building a strong and capable workforce. Throughout the year, we delivered a range of initiatives to attract, retain, and upskill educators, including offering financial incentives to join the profession, providing scholarships for further study, and raising the profile of the profession through targeted campaigns. We have also committed to expand the department's early childhood regulatory workforce from 2025–26 to further strengthen regulation and ensure quality and safety in early childhood education and care services.
In March 2025, Queensland entered into the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement with the Commonwealth Government—a landmark commitment to increase funding for Queensland state schools making sure every student has access to the resources and support they need to reach their full potential.
We have continued our focus on the core foundations of learning, delivering quality teaching and learning, investing in our valued workforce, reducing red tape for teachers, and maintaining safe and disciplined classrooms.
Throughout 2024–25, we achieved some of our best report card results for English and mathematics since the Australian Curriculum was implemented in 2012. We also improved our NAPLAN participation rate which was the highest across all year levels since 2019. These achievements can be attributed to our united focus on lifting outcomes for every student and the dedication of our schools and their communities.
Teachers are at the heart of shaping the future of our students and too much red tape and administrative burden takes them away from focusing on teaching and learning. Over the past year, we have consulted extensively to develop our draft Red Tape Reduction Action Plan. We have already commenced implementing a range of initiatives to reduce workload in schools, including streamlining procurement processes, establishing a single contact point for teacher recruitment, setting consistent statewide expectations for parent-school communication, introducing a 1-plan-per-student approach to student needs, and launching the Small Schools Support Plan.
In 2025, we launched the Queensland Virtual Academy, our biggest classroom, providing innovative learning opportunities to more than 4,000 students in 365 state schools, removing boundaries, particularly for regional and rural students.
Bullying is a complex community issue with significant impacts on students. In 2024–25, we launched a nation-leading plan and initiatives to address bullying in schools. Tailored interventions, expanded wellbeing services, and enhanced crisis support for parents and carers are supporting Queensland's learners, with additional programs to follow.
In 2025–26 we will also make our successful Behaviour Boost permanent, providing state schools with additional resourcing to support implementation of behaviour management strategies. Following our successful pilot of Workplace Health and Safety Officers in schools, we will now rollout almost 140 additional positions.
In 2024–25, we continued delivering critical educational infrastructure to meet the needs of our diverse and growing communities. In addition to opening 2 new schools in Redland Bay and Bellbird Park, we enhanced our existing education facilities with $1.18 billion in upgrades or new construction.
On 1 November 2024, the government announced that Arts Queensland would transition to the Department of Education. We welcome this opportunity to foster a vibrant arts culture in Queensland and in 2025–26 we will launch our new 10-year strategy to deliver a thriving creative sector and vibrant statewide arts scene.
The first half of 2025 presented significant challenges due to a number of severe weather events across our state. Staff and communities continued to demonstrate resilience and commitment as we navigated these events and continued to deliver a high-quality early childhood and education system and a vibrant arts and cultural sector for Queenslanders.
Our achievements throughout the year have been made possible by the unwavering dedication of our early childhood staff, school leaders, teachers, support staff in schools, and departmental staff. I thank them all for the work they do each day to shape a future where education becomes a pathway to opportunity and success for every child and student, and arts drives our creative economy across Queensland.
Sharon Schimming
Director-General