Have you read the Castlereagh Statement? You should!

In writing this response to Castlereagh Statement, I share how it is a vital initiative in AI in education. So, I hope that my engagement with it goals and principles contributes to its further engagement.

When I 'stumbled' across the it on LinkedIn, the discovery proved to me that its hard in an information-dredged age it is to 'keep up' with important information. Furthermore, it took some searching to find the website that outlines its origins and future development.

Nonetheless, as a curriculum designer working to implement a pedagogy-first approach with AI in the classroom, I am elated that the Statement's mission is to be

the voice of a grassroots community of educators, leaders, and students speaking to one of the most urgent challenges facing Australian education, and offering a shared way forward.

Make No Mistake, This Is A Pivotal Moment

Arguably, while the collective focus of AI in Education to date has been on  "AI Literacy" and "Safe Use" guidelines, in a visionary move, facilitators of the Statement, Professors Danny Liu (USYD), Jason Lodge (UQ) and Microsoft Executive, Katie Ford, have moved towards a systemic Australian-based approach. The AI jargon for this, I believe, is known as defining one's 'sovereign capability'. At Curriculum Makers, we're hoping it means that every teacher, in every classroom get to efficaciously and confidently interacting with AI.  Consequently, dealing with 'an agent' rather than just a tool, means tackling philosophically vexing issues and practical processes, first and foremost, pedagogically. 

Broadcasting a collective vision of AI in Education

The National Summit in October 2025 that gave rise to the Statement  was hosted by the University of Sydney at its Castlereagh Street campus. Its diverse representation brought together a wide range of stakeholders, including representatives from schools, vocational education and training (VET) providers, universities, Government departments , accrediting bodies  and leading organisations from the professions, industry, and the arts. The Statement's structure is driven by three goals and six principles. These are then 'operationalised' through "a three-horizon framework for action. The near horizon to address urgent stabilisation... the medium horizon drives necessary structural transitions... The far horizon lays new foundations for education and training models centred on valued human capabilities."

As I examine its first goal of "A shared definition of what we value in human learners and educators, with aligned measurement systems", I am excited to press on and review how its principles might realised such a bold vision. What lessons might we have learned from the implementation of the Australian Curriculum? Is it right to conclude that in choosing to build the Statement on the 2019 Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019), its primary aim is embedding the Declaration's ethos into human-machine interactions with AI?

So then, reading the Statement's preamble its intention to avoid defining "the architecture of the solution", I am curious about how the challenge ahead will not just be about coming up with the 'unified vision' but devising a constructive and inclusive process through which the vision can be realised.  So, as the words in the preamble of the Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative appropriately ask us to see the challenge ahead as working "to build a world worth living in". 

Spotlighting Principles

At the very least, then, I read the six principles presented in the Statement as an attempt to define this moment, culturally and pedagogically, as keeping the 'human in the loop', 

This provokes me into thinking about how educational history shows us striving to be 'student-centre'. Arguably, evident from the time of the Enlightenment, e.g. from the writings of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi in the early 1800s, then further substantiated in the late-19th and early-20th century by John Dewey, who in seeing education as a social process and "learning by doing",  hoped that students were transformed from passive listeners into active investigators. 

Then, in the mid 1990s figures like Jean Piaget developed the theory of Cognitive Constructivism and Lev Vygotsky his theory of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). And so we put in place the idea of 'scaffolding'. Now in the digital age, concepts of Personalised Learning and Differentiated Instruction emphasise that teachers must adapt content, process, and product to suit individual student readiness.

What of teacher-wellbeing?

The second principle also provokes into thinking about how technological solutions relate to alleviating the teacher's . The lessons of teaching and learning during the COVID pandemic, the number of teachers walking away from the profession and, most recently, teachers striking teachers also become implicated in how we come to realise AI in Education.

I note how the principles refer to 'redefining' and 'reconceptualising', signalling to redress the status quo.  However, we must not underestimate how in historical terms concepts can be difficult to unpack because they become conflated with unintended meanings. For instance, as a curriculum officer based in a district office, I often witness how 'learning styles' was conflated with differentiated instruction.  For instance, cognitive scientist, Paul Howard-Jones is widely to debunking "Learning Styles" from 2014 and his systematic review published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Conversely, what Jay McTighe's and Carol Ann Tomlinson's collaboration in Integrating Differentiated Instruction & Understanding by Design: Connecting Content and Kids (2006) makes clear, that while the "Big Ideas" (the content) remain rigorous and fixed, the pathways to them are adapted to meet the diverse needs of every student .

What's so special about Principle 2?

I see the second principle as vitally important to redressing the current situation. Its marshalling of 'Institutional and individual humility' demonstrates how a ‘unified national vision’ starts in the 'secular' reading of  humility as the learning new things.  However, I want to add that a historical view of the term adds to its significance because it shows how the term evolved from a number of origins, adding to the depth and breadth of scenarios that unfold when different elements of the principle are realised.  

What this should tell us is why it is not always obvious to behave with humility when trying to form an essential belief or complete a challenging quest for meaning. The following chart is only a 'wikipedia-type' exploration of the term, but, nonetheless, it shows the diversity of meanings of the term.

Then there's the  "Humility Paradox" to consider. As many religious texts note, the moment you realise you are humble, you have likely lost it. This makes it the only virtue that "disappears" the moment it is claimed. Such as the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector illustrates when the Pharisee's prayer declares "God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get."

Why does this matter?

As I read it, the idea of calling "for a commitment to institutional collaborative innovation and humility" seals the relationship between AI in Education with human cognition. For instance, in the past fifteen years, cognitive scientists  Drs Barbara Oakley and Terry Sejnowski, have popularised ‘learning to learn’ in their Coursera MOOC course for teaching secondary and undergraduate students.

Through applying theories of Embodied Cognition and Conceptual Metaphor, they  emphasize that learning and problem-solving are an oscillating process. You cannot stay in one mode forever:

• Focused mode is for doing: calculating, writing, or memorising. It provides the "raw data" for the brain to work with.
• Diffuse mode is for understanding: synthesising information and overcoming "Einstellung"—a cognitive bias where you get stuck on a wrong approach because you are focusing too hard on it.

Conclusion

The Castlereagh Statement calls for a collective agency.  We are at a pivotal moment in Australian education. The Statement aims to reconsider the capabilities our learners for living and working in an AI Age. It holds a vision for the coordination to transform Australia’s education and training sectors. It provocatively assumes that Generative AI is matching cognitive tasks which our systems were built to develop and assess. So, how can our institutions respond?