As this year pulls into the terminus, we’ve been reflecting on small beginnings, big change, and the importance of questioning the status quo.
From curious wonderings and testing ideas, from stepping outside the norm and offering donors new ways to engage, MPF has entered a new phase. We’re seeing new partnerships with new schools, cluster schools driving growth, systems shifting from within, understandings deepening, and sustainability taking root.
This is the story of how place-based philanthropy with donors working together has become a catalyst for systems change through local, grassroots leadership.
What we are seeing in whole-school reform in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the Mornington Peninsula is momentous. It goes far beyond school-by-school improvements in academic results, student engagement, teacher retention, or parental satisfaction. It’s bigger than awards, record VCE results, improving NAPLAN data, enrolment growth, or changing community narratives.
It goes to the change which is happening at the system level. That it is sustainable. And that schools in low-socioeconomic communities, schools that have too often been positioned as “behind”, are now leading change in schools that are far more resourced.
Underlying our approach were our beliefs that every child can learn to read. That every family wants the best for their children. That every teacher wants the best for their students. We did not accept the stigma of place, or the script that quietly decides who gets opportunity and who does not.
We listened and learned. We examined our own narratives and how they are imposed. We stepped out of the way and allowed resources to flow according to needs identified by the community. And now, these leaders, schools, and communities are leading change across a much wider area of the Peninsula.
In 2017, we began with a small grants program with grants of up to $5,000, responding to deep socio-economic disadvantage. With each grant we learned more. Some worked. Some didn’t. We stayed honest with our donors and brought them with us on the journey.
In the early days, we were on the periphery of schools, funding pizza ovens and garden beds, until a small group of primary school leaders raised a shared concern: oral language levels in children enrolling in Prep were well below expectations.
Children with significant communication barriers were not just locked out of learning, but out of participation. For some, this showed up as disruptive behaviour; for others, quiet withdrawal. Both led to the same outcome: children falling further behind.
This led to a pilot speech therapy program in one school. The data showed significant improvement over the year, and teachers strongly endorsed the impact. In 2019, this grew into No Limits, which expanded speech therapy across five primary schools and their feeder preschools. Despite COVID’s best efforts to derail a three-year donor commitment, the program continued, with a one-year extension into 2022.
Along the way, teachers and principals began asking deeper questions. Why did the approach used by speech therapists differ so sharply from classroom reading instruction? What was really going on?
The answer was confronting. The issue wasn’t the children. It was the way teachers had been taught to teach reading. For decades, balanced literacy and whole language approaches had dominated. When teachers were introduced to systematic synthetic phonics, often in just a few days of training, many were stunned they had not been taught this earlier.
Those moments of curiosity sparked something much bigger.
Our schools began a collective journey into the science of learning: consistent behaviour routines across schools and clusters; phonics in the early years; direct instruction; diagnostic assessment; data-informed intervention; and the development of a core knowledge curriculum.
As a result, schools now deliver high-quality whole-class instruction (Tier 1), systematic small-group intervention (Tier 2), and highly specialised individualised support (Tier 3). These are profound shifts. For a long time, schools made them quietly, reconstructing themselves behind a façade of compliance, until policy finally caught up. When phonics instruction became mandatory in 2024, our schools could openly share what they had been building for years.
Over the past four years, primary and secondary schools across our network have radically reshaped their structures, teaching, curricula, and operations. They have built deep expertise within their staff, expertise now being shared with other schools across the Peninsula. These internal resources are what will drive change well beyond any individual program or grant.
Philanthropy made this possible. It created the space, time, and permission for leaders to experiment, to take risks, and to fail safely. But it only worked because of the trust built between MPF and our school partners. And the trust schools, in turn, place in their teachers, students, and families. That trust extends across our board, staff, and donors.
Now, with policy settings aligned and resources increasingly available through the Department of Education, the work ahead is about implementation, maintaining fidelity, monitoring impact, and continuously improving practice.
MPF’s role is not to own or control this work, but to support it and let it fly. The groundwork has been done. New schools will benefit from what already exists and learn from colleagues within a system that now has clarity and direction.
And as we help this work take flight, we turn our attention to the next set of challenges, asking, once again, what else might be changed if we are willing to question the status quo and disrupt quietly, together.