Head of NSW schools agency told staff to ‘change' demographic data, inquiry told

The Age

08-05-2025

The former head of the NSW Education Department's school building unit allegedly instructed a data expert to manipulate demographic data to 'make it a higher number', an instruction she told a corruption inquiry she understood to be about securing more budget funding.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption heard evidence on Thursday that the former head of School Infrastructure NSW, Anthony Manning, told an employee to change the data prepared for a pre-budget submission to the then-Coalition government.
'He was quite direct, he said change it to be higher,' she said.
The state's corruption watchdog is holding a public inquiry into the conduct of Manning, the chief executive of the department's school infrastructure unit from 2017 until last year.
Jannatun Haque, a senior data expert in the department who worked under Manning, described her former boss as 'very Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'.
'If you were on his good side [he was] very positive and if it was something he disagreed with you, it was brutal,' she said.
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She described a meeting with Manning in 2021 in which they discussed the agency's projections on school-age population in which he was unhappy with falling population data. She said Manning told her to 'change' the figures before a pre-budget submission.
When she refused to change the data, telling Manning 'we can't just amend those numbers', he told her 'we will find someone who can do what we want them to do'.