A $45,000 fact-finding mission through Finland and Singapore helped Education Minister Yvette Berry gather evidence to back her push for greater equity in Canberra's public schools.
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Ms Berry's chief of staff Stephen Paillas, University of Canberra High Kaleen principal Lana Read and deputy director general of education Deb Efthymiades joined Ms Berry on the May 14 to 22 tour.
An itinerary for the ministerial delegation reveals a busy schedule. The team arrived in Singapore early on May 15 and attended briefings at the Ministry of Education that morning.
Five other meetings crossing into Ms Berry's portfolio as Sport and Recreation Minister were scheduled on Monday alone. Three meetings and a drinks event were held on Tuesday.
By Wednesday, the delegation was in Finland, meeting with affordable housing body the Y-Foundation to discuss homelessness.
Four education meetings were held on the Thursday with a further six on Friday.
On May 20, a Saturday, the foursome held a final homelessness meeting, with a few hours free between travelling to their hotel and dinner.
May 21 and 22 were spent travelling home to Canberra.
The trip's $45,334.91 price tag covered flights, accommodation, and in-country travel, and included the price of Ms Berry hosting drinks for "Singapore hosts".
Ms Berry said this week that the group had aimed to gather ideas and bust myths about the high-performing education systems of each country. Singapore ranked first in the 2016 PISA rankings, Finland fifth and Australia 14th.
In the short-term, the ACT government will look at teacher exchanges with Singapore, Ms Berry said, and Ms Read will speak to other Canberra principals about programs that could be implemented in territory schools.
Learnings from the mission will also inform later stages of the Future of Education project.
"This visit to Finland and Singapore was information-gathering so we could firm up our own understanding of the school systems over there, how we compared - and we compared very well - and all the kinds of things that we could adopt around how we value our teachers, how we engage parents in the school community better than we are, how we can improve equity and outcomes for our students better than we do now, and we can learn once we have an English copy of their (Finland's) curriculum what we can do here," Ms Berry said.
"There's no miracle cure, but there are some differences in the way things are done we could adopt which could be simple."
Of particular interest to Ms Berry was Finland's food programs and rigorous screening process of would-be teachers, while language education in both systems was "really, really great", she said.
Ms Berry will deliver a ministerial statement on her findings from the trip in the Legislative Assembly.
