About Matthew Jacobson
Twenty years as a NSW principal. Seven schools. Most of them a long way from anywhere.
I ran NSW public schools from 2002 to 2024, in six substantive and relieving principal appointments, including a small school serving an Aboriginal community at Fingal Head, small rural schools, and Lawson Public School in the Blue Mountains for ten years. I know what it's like to be the only person in the building who can make the call, and what it's like when the staff meeting, the parent letter and the assessment task all land on the same Tuesday night.
In 2010 the department awarded me a leadership fellowship, and I spent it travelling post-apartheid South Africa, township schools to farm schools, looking for what successful schools had in common, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Johannesburg and Harvard University. I brought it home to Fingal Head, where our students, most of them Aboriginal, recorded the school's best results. I served seven years as an Australian Army Reserve officer, and I was part of the response to the Boxing Day tsunami. Those taught me the same lesson a small school does: you do the job in front of you, properly, with what you've got.
I do this as a Christian who wants to ease suffering. That's the reason, not the marketing.
Now I spend my days with country principals and their teachers, doing the real work, properly, with AI, so it stops eating their evenings.
On the record
What I've actually done, so you don't have to take my word for it
- Principal, NSW public schools, 2002 to 2024. —Bullarah (2006), Niangala (2007), Fingal Head (2009), Bilambil relieving (2012), Oaklands Central (2013), Lawson Public School (2015 to 2024). Classifications P6 to P3.
- Fingal Head Public School. —A small school serving an Aboriginal community. Small rural schools before and after it.
- Results, measured by the department, not by me. —Under the National Partnerships program every school I led recorded strong NAPLAN growth, confirmed through the NSW peer review and school registration processes. Student value-added in literacy, numeracy and wellbeing. Community satisfaction on Tell Them From Me moved from extremely low to the highest in the region. The greatest gains were in mathematics for Aboriginal students at Fingal Head.
- 2010 North Coast Region Leadership Fellowship, NSW Department of Education. —A self-directed study of what successful South African schools had in common, township to farm school, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Johannesburg and Harvard University. Applied at Fingal Head with the school's best recorded outcomes.
- 2019 NSW Leadership Institute scholarship. —Master of Education (Leadership), University of Wollongong, in progress. Bachelor of Teaching and Bachelor of Arts, University of Newcastle, 2002.
- Senior officer roles beyond the school gate. —Teach NSW; peer assessor for the School Excellence Framework across NSW; state-wide NAPLAN data analysis and the LMBR system rollout.
- K–12 vocational pathways with TAFE NSW. —Certification and stronger transitions from school into training and work.
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student growth. —Through the School Partnership Program and sustained targeted teaching.
- Australian Army Reserve officer, seven years. —Commissioned from the ranks.
- Advocate for students with additional needs and their families. —Including the NDIS side of the desk.
- Queensland-registered teacher. —Delivering in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.
- Who I trained with to build this, 2026. —AI implementation with Ryan Drake of Ential, Sydney. Funnel and launch strategy with Allison O'Brien of Integral Marketing, a global marketing firm. I paid them, took the structure, and built it myself.
- Builder, not just talker. —The assessment tool country principals use on the day was built with them, on the phone, and rebuilt the same afternoon when they said what was wrong.
I come to you. Merimbula, Bairnsdale, Albury-Wodonga, and wherever the next valley is.
Everything is done on your own units, your own classes, your own laptop. You leave with what you built.
No pitch, no jargon, no slides you'll never open again. A day that changes Monday.
Book Matthew to speak
Nobody is coming to help: leadership when you're the senior person in the room
Forty minutes for principal conferences, system days and leadership groups: Fingal Head, the Army, the tsunami, and what AI actually changes for a school and what it doesn't. Most groups book the talk, then bring me back for the full day with their staff.