Michael Noonan

Michael Noonan is the Director of Strategy at Tandem, a research, data and analytics advisory firm specialising in the education sector. Michael is a social researcher with over 15 years’ experience designing and conducting evaluation projects across the education sector. He has led or contributed to numerous national research and evaluation projects spanning the schools, vocational education and training and university sectors.

Michael has been directly providing school improvement advice to schools for the last 10 years. Over 2023 and 2024 he has worked with numerous school clients focusing on issues such as data and assessment practices, financial reporting to the board, improving student and stakeholder engagement and teaching and learning practices.

Prior to founding Tandem, Michael was head of Research and Technology at Independent Schools Victoria for over seven years. In this role, he worked across ISV’s diverse 230 member schools providing research and analysis into diverse issues and challenges around school improvement. While at ISV, he worked on improvement strategies for a wide range of schools around strategy, governance, performance metrics and frameworks, curriculum, stakeholder engagement, data and analytics, principal wellbeing and leadership.

Before joining ISV, Michael was a senior consultant at PhillipsKPA, where he provided strategic advice to several clients across the government and higher education sectors. He has worked with every Government, Catholic and Independent education body in Australia and has extensive experience in evaluating school performance data.

Michael is experienced at leading complex transformation and renowned for delivering on key strategic priorities. He is known for his lateral thinking and ability to align insights to strategy.

Michael is also the current Chairperson at Westgate Community Initiatives Group, a large not for profit organisation that provides disability employment services to marginalised people in Victoria and Queensland.