Education Minister Yvette won't give ideas on how to close education equity gaps

Speaking before a future of education summit on Friday, Ms Berry said equity was one of her priorities but more work needed to be done to understand why some students were falling further behind their more advantaged peers.

"There's no one simple answer for any education system about how we can overcome any issues, whether that is learning outcomes or equity gaps," she said.

The Education Directorate annual report revealed ACT public schools had missed their targets in narrowing the achievement gap between students whose parents had gone to university and those whose parents had not.

Ms Berry said the cost of living crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and bushfires had affected students' learning in the first five years of the future of education strategy.

She said she did not have any preconceived ideas going into the second half of the 10-year future of education strategy and instead wanted to listen to students, teachers and people working in all education sectors at the summit.

Ms Berry said the government had addressed equity by introducing three-year-old preschool, free Chromebooks for public school students and an equity fund for disadvantaged families.

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The Education Minister said the pilot program to provide free meals in public schools, which was a key election commitment, would be starting "later this year" in the five selected schools.

Catholic Education Canberra Goulburn director Ross Fox said his system's Catalyst program based on the science of learning had boosted results across all NAPLAN domains and reduced teacher workload.

"We've currently got surveys being returned by our teachers saying as a result of our initiatives that they have saved six to 10 hours a week from their workload because of the support we're providing," Mr Fox said.

"Absolutely, instructional approaches are key to achieving equity for us and we've seen great results already and we really want to see more."

Ms Berry would not directly respond when asked if the Education Directorate should implement some of the strategies used by the Catholic school system, including more explicit, direct instruction.

"One of the hallmarks of [the future of education strategy] when I introduced it was to address equity in our schools and that's been what we've been doing over the last five years, is implementing things that actually improve equity across our school system," Ms Berry said.

Australian Catholic University Canberra campus dean Professor Darius von Guttner said it was important to examine why the ACT was not achieving milestones that were set five years ago.

"I think it's about valuing our educators, valuing also teacher education, creating systemic structures that enable teachers to be on top of the evidence-based learning, about them being able to shape the classrooms," Professor von Guttner said.

Students at the summit spoke about being known as individuals in the education system. However, Professor von Guttner said this idea didn't necessarily need to shape the education program as in personalised and inquiry-based learning.

"Perhaps that's what education department need to look into. Is inquiry-based learning the solution for everything or easy to perhaps more direct instruction that needs to be brought back into it, That our teachers need to understand the cognitive science behind well, 'how do students actually learn?'"

Association of Independent Schools of the ACT executive director Andrew Wrigley said non-government schools were keen to be part of the conversation about the future of the sector.

"A lot of the outcomes or the priorities were in our view system-based for the government sector," Mr Wrigley said.

"So we would see a really great opportunity for independent schools to be visible and articulated in the next five years."

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