This was always going to be the Labor government’s year of education. Minister Jason Clare has had a full work slate juggling major reviews and policy responses to childcare centres, schools and universities.

As we hurtle to the end of the year, there are a lot of balls still up in the air. Not least of which is the potential damage from a 30 per cent cut in the number of international students at the country’s biggest universities, thanks to a government plan to cap overall numbers at 270,000. The sector claims that international students have been turned into a political football in the migration debate and this could decimate the business models of universities, or even, catapult the economy into a recession.