It’s a few years ago now that I first travelled to the UK to see teaching in action. Aside from the transformative experience of seeing world-class practice in action, the other thing which I was really struck by is the power of multi-school organisations.

As discussed on my podcast with Grattan on MSOs, it’s hard to beat the power of schools working together to develop and disseminate high-quality instructional materials, practices, and systems to raise student achievement.

What’s super exciting is that the MSO movement in Australia is really growing!

To date, Catholic Education systems have been a the pioneers in this space. First movers were Catholic Ed Canberra Goulburn with their phenomenal Catalyst program. Since then, similar movements have occurred in MACs (Melbourne) and in Tasmania too. These are all phenomenal examples and very exciting initiatives.

The MSO project that I’ve been most heavily involved with in Aus is the Magnify project within Catholic Education Sandhurst (CES). In my role as Director of Steplab Aus, I’ve been working closely with CES executive, leaders, and teachers to begin to develop a culture of coaching to enhance high quality instruction right throughout the Diocese.

Making change at the scale of 50 or more schools is no mean feat, and it starts with vision.

I was delighted to see that vision further solidified in CES recently through their Learning and Teaching Instructional Model. I think this document is such a great high-level summary of great teaching and learning principles, that some EdThreads readers might like to check it out!

To me, the MSO movement is one of the most exciting things happening in Aus education at present. Watch this space, I know there are many more exciting things to come!

Explicit Mathematics Program making waves!

The Explicit Mathematics Program is a F-2 (F-3 in 2026) mathematics program that gives schools everything they need to run high-quality mathematics instruction and assessment for their students.

I was blown away to open LinkedIn recently and see this post about the Explicit Mathematics Program from Steph Le Lievre from Serpentine Primary school!

I couldn’t be more proud of the impact that the EMP is having in hundreds of schools around Australia, just in its first year of release!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to many of our EMP early adopters and Steph’s feedback has been echoed across the board! The last Prin I spoke to said, ‘My teachers have told me that if I don’t get them EMP again next year, they’re all leaving’ : P

If you haven’t explored the EMP as yet, I’d love for you to head over to our website and check it out. You might even like to come to the upcoming Think Forward Educators webinar in which I’ll be talking about key instructional routines for the Primary Mathematics Classroom and touching upon the EMP too : )

Announcements and Opportunities

Primary Mathematics PD

I’ll be running the following PD alongside Toni Hatten-Roberts and David Morkunas…

Think Forward Educators webinar on Key Instructional Routines for the Primary Mathematics Classroom, October 14th in the evening

Instructional Coaching PD

If you’re keen for some coaching training, I’ll be running full-day Steplab Intensives at the following times.

• Syd, Oct 23rd, 2025

• Gold Coast, Oct 30th, 2025

• Melb, Nov 6th, 2025

• Gippsland, Feb 9th, 2026

• Sunshine coast, Mar 9th, 2026

Hope to see you at one of the above!