Here are five key takeaways from the K-12 leadership roundtable at this year’s PIE High Asia Pacific conference:
1. Agents are partners, not pipelines
Michelle Waters, head of international admissions & partnerships at St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School, was crystal clear that relationships with agents live or die on trust and transparency. She stressed the importance of proactive, human contact rather than just transactional emails.
“I’ve learnt in this role to be very honest and upfront… saying, ‘Hey, I’ve heard this is happening – can we talk about that?’”
Her team hosts agent morning teas, invites agents onto campus, and sends regular photos and documents to help them tell the school’s story. The message: if you want quality students, you need quality relationships.
2. Teacher shortages could reshape what growth looks like
For Helensvale State High School principal Rachel Cutajar teaching is “the greatest job on earth” – but right now “is not really being able to be recruited very well”.
She noted that this reality is making decisions about international enrolments “very real” for schools as they work to support both domestic and international students.
Cutajar framed this not as a reason to pull back from international education, but as a reminder that any growth has to be realistic about teacher supply and focused on maintaining a high‑quality experience for every student.
3. Wellbeing, “hidden luggage” and the reality of global school communities
Principals also pointed to mental health as a growing pressure point. They described “incredibly brave” young people travelling across the globe without family, but schools are discovering “hidden luggage” only once students are on campus and struggling.
Cultural stigma, fears about disclosure and uneven information flows between families, agents and schools all play a role. The response from leaders is to deepen pastoral care, tighten expectations with partners and make sure support structures are robust enough for the realities of today’s cohorts.
At John Paul College, principal Craig Merritt argued that schools also need to move beyond a simple “domestic vs international” lens when they talk about student needs, pointing instead to the “breadth and complexity” of a community where more than half of families have a language background other than English.
4. Transnational education opens up – and partnerships move centre stage
While public schools have had a pathway for TNE for some time, Queensland private schools only received the “rubber stamp” from mid‑June to deliver offshore, noted Michael Bos, director of international at the Moreton Bay Colleges.
“This presents a lot of opportunities for us now, which is fantastic… but obviously, we’re behind a lot of the other states, we’re behind a lot of other countries as well,” said Bos.
The opportunity is huge – but Michael warned it hinges on choosing the right overseas partners who understand both their own regulatory frameworks and Queensland’s.
On the topic of partnerships, Brisbane Boys’ College headmaster Andre Casson argued for deeper partnerships closer to home, suggesting Southeast Queensland universities should be true partners for schools, giving international families clear, high‑quality post‑school pathways in the region.
5. Global competition is real – and international students know their options
A.B. Paterson College principal Joanne Sheehy warned that international families aren’t just comparing one Australian school with another – they are weighing up very different education systems around the world.
After visiting schools in Singapore, Shanghai, Vietnam, the Emirates and the UK, she said she has seen first‑hand how quickly some overseas schools are changing their teaching and learning, and how “articulate” international students are about their expectations.
If the experience on offer feels out of step with what students could get elsewhere, Sheehy suggested they may simply decide they are “not getting value for money” and “go somewhere that it is”. For her, that’s a call for school leaders to lean into change, not retreat from it, and to ensure their classrooms reflect the kind of future their students are actually heading into.
