By Mike Wagenheim
Australia has launched a pilot program in the country’s schools to help educators identify and address antisemitism in the classroom.
The initiative, developed by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in partnership with the Australian government, was formally rolled out on March 17 at a policy dialogue focused on a national approach to antisemitism in education.
The program is being piloted over six months in New South Wales and Victoria, with plans for a nationwide expansion. It brings together federal and state education authorities, as well as public, independent, Catholic, Jewish and Islamic school systems, officials said.
The effort follows the terrorist attack at a Chanukah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, 2025, where a father and son killed 15 people and wounded dozens in what authorities described as an antisemitic, Islamic State-inspired assault.
Australian officials said the attackers acted alone but were motivated by extremist ideology, marking the country’s deadliest mass shooting in nearly three decades.
“To have that full commitment and engagement, both at the public level, but also in the faith school system, is incredibly powerful,”
Heather Mann, a project officer with UNESCO
In the wake of the attack, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the creation of an antisemitism education task force to strengthen prevention and response efforts in schools.
The UNESCO program aligns with that initiative, Jillian Segal, Australia’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, describing it as a key component of the government’s broader strategy.
The training is designed to deepen educators’ understanding of both historical and contemporary antisemitism, while equipping them with practical tools to respond to incidents and manage sensitive classroom discussions.
It also emphasizes recognizing antisemitic tropes and improving media literacy to counter misinformation, with curriculum materials embedded in existing subjects such as history, civics and literature.
Heather Mann, a project officer in UNESCO’s Global Citizenship and Peace Education section, said that the program had been in development for more than two years following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia.
The Bondi Beach attack accelerated its rollout.
“We’ve really had to speed up the timeline and engage with more partners, but we had both us and the government, especially the special envoy on combating antisemitism, committed to this program of work ahead of the attack and now it’s just intensified the amount of work and the urgency to roll this out nationally,” said Mann, who coordinates UNESCO’s program on combating antisemitism.
The pilot is “going very well,” Mann said with 10 schools “that are fully engaged.”
She said UNESCO has “already delivered training for the relevant staff in both departments of education. And this is currently being evaluated by external evaluators, and the initial feedback is very, very positive.”
‘Incredibly powerful’
Recent data released by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry shows 1,654 antisemitic incidents were reported nationwide between October 2024 and October 2025, which is nearly five times higher than the average before the Israel-Hamas war. The incidents ranged from verbal abuse to threats against Jewish institutions. (comment had been sought from the council.)
The task force’s work, folded into the federal government’s response to the previous plan released by the office of the special envoy to combat antisemitism, is to consider actions to “help the Australian education system prevent, tackle and properly respond to antisemitism,” according to a government release.
UNESCO is running similar training programs in Europe. Of the 30 or so countries Mann has worked with on antisemitism training initiatives, Mann said Australia’s overall commitment is stronger than that of any other country.
“To have that full commitment and engagement, both at the public level, but also in the faith school system, is incredibly powerful,” she said.
There has been an effort in some countries led by left-wing governments to either justify the rise in antisemitism by pointing to Israel’s military actions against Hamas in Gaza or by completely ignoring the link between Judaism and Israel.
Mann told media the training program instituted in Australia “reflects the reality of incidents that are taking place in schools across Australia. And the reality is that there has been a huge rise in incidents since the 7th of October 2023, and these incidents are connected to Israel.”
“We cannot avoid dealing with what we’re calling Israel-related forms of antisemitism,” Mann said. “We’ve been trying to do that with more historic forms of antisemitism, so that the teachers present in these training programs have a really comprehensive view of the different forms that antisemitism takes and how it adapts to different situations.”
That includes training on common stereotypes, such as Jewish power, connections between Jews and money, and the original blood libel, but also “raising their understanding of why we’re seeing a specific rise in antisemitism in this current moment,” including what Mann calls “anti-Zionist forms of antisemitism.”
Mann conceded that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to bring together a whole teacher force from different parts of the political spectrum and get everyone in the same place.
“But we can move the needle a little bit, or raise their understandings or bring new perspectives so that they’re focused more on the harm that these incidents are bringing, particularly to Jewish students and Jewish teachers, but then also on school communities as a whole,” she said.
Mann said the partnership is working with an evaluation team that is measuring changes in knowledge and attitudes among program participants and conducting in-depth interviews with participants “about the steps that they’ve taken because of our program to address antisemitism and the change that they’re seeing in their schools.”
Separately, the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority has been tasked with identifying ways to strengthen the curriculum on antisemitism and Jewish history through 2026.
“It will strengthen antisemitism education, create a deeper understanding of Jewish Australians’ history and an understanding of Australian values,” Education Minister Jason Clare said.
