Educating the next generation

Guided by a passion to address inequity, Rosemary Conn has been advocating for the needs of disadvantaged schools for the past decade. She is this week’s Changemaker.

It was a high school mentoring program that helped to steer Rosemary Conn towards the not-for-profit sector.

Conn had been working as a management consultant with Deloitte in London when she took up the opportunity to guide young students in an underprivileged school, opening her eyes to the inequities that exist within education.

In 2008, Conn left the corporate grind to join the Beacon Foundation, a national not-for-profit organisation delivering career awareness and work readiness programs to low socio-economic communities. This ultimately led to her becoming the inaugural CEO of Schools Plus – a position she has held for almost a decade.

Schools Plus was founded in response to the first Gonski Review, which identified a need for philanthropy to help close the education gap caused by disadvantage. Under Conn’s leadership, the not-for-profit organisation has directed over $36 million to support disadvantaged schools across Australia and generate long-term change in the sector.

Continuing her advocacy, Conn was co-chair of Philanthropy Australia’s Education Funder Network and made submissions to the Gonski 2.0 Review. In a nod to this work and passion, she was named among the Australian Financial Review’s 100 Women of Influence in 2019 and was a finalist of the 2022 CEO Magazine Awards.

“If you had asked me what I wanted to do when I was seven years old, I would have said become a teacher, so somehow I’ve come full circle with my current role working with schools at Schools Plus,” Conn says.

In this week’s Changemaker, Conn explains why diversity, listening and optimism are all critical ingredients in creating lasting, positive change.

What does this role mean to you?

Being CEO of Schools Plus has been the greatest privilege of my career to date. It’s been an opportunity to channel my passion for tackling social inequity into creating an organisation with that mission at its heart. 

I remember on day one, it was just me, sitting down with a blank sheet of paper trying to figure out where to start. Eight years later and luckily I’m not alone. Thousands of our supporters, teachers and the Schools Plus team share that passion and have worked together to make a difference in over 430,000 children’s lives.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned over your career?

I’ve learned that meaningful change takes time, and that requires a lot more patience than I had expected, but that’s where the real value lies.

From the outset, being school-led has been one of our mantras. The work we do is very focused on listening and understanding the needs of each unique school community, and appreciating context is key. 

Can you identify some of the challenges facing the Australian education sector?

At the moment, Australia is experiencing a huge challenge with teacher shortages, particularly in some of our rural and remote communities, where finding experienced teachers and school leaders is a constant struggle.

As a nation, we are also seeing the gap between students experiencing the greatest disadvantage in the country and their more advantaged peers continue to grow in terms of academic achievement, wellbeing and education opportunities.

What does good leadership in the social sector mean to you?

I believe a relentless focus on our purpose to tackle disadvantage is key. It’s the reason why all of us come to work each day. We need to be constantly questioning if everything we do is going to move the dial.

Building a team with a diversity of skills and experience, and who value each other’s views has also contributed to Schools Plus being able to grow so quickly. We have people from education, not for profit and corporate backgrounds who bring different perspectives to our work.

Listening has also been key. Good leadership in this context requires taking the time to understand what our schools want to achieve for their students and what change our supporters wish to see through their giving.

What motivates you to continue working in this field?

I would say that there are three driving forces which really motivate me as an individual.

The first one is joy in seeing our work coming to life in a school, meeting the children whose day-to-day experience of education has been changed as a result of the partnerships between schools, donors and Schools Plus.

I’m also motivated by optimism or a belief that we can make a difference and we have to keep relentlessly chipping away at the issues. The work the sector does is important for future generations, it’s necessary and there are tangible outcomes.

Lastly, a sense of injustice or inequity – we all have a role to play in doing something about it.

How do you unwind after work?

About four years ago, I did a yoga teacher training course so I would love to say that I unwind by doing yoga on a daily basis. If only that were true! It is a work-in-progress but any opportunities to be more mindful, including jumping in the ocean when I can, helps me to decompress after work.

What do you want your legacy to look like?

I share the belief of many people in the not-for-profit sector that I would like to leave the world a better place.

A few years ago, I started off wishing the legacy of Schools Plus would be to change the lives of the students we support. That still stands but now I have greater aspirations – I hope that together we have the power to change the system, to create education opportunities for generations of children to come.