Education Minister Simon Birmingham’s office on Monday confirmed Flinders University professor John Halsey’s review of the education gap between metropolitan areas and the rest of the country would visit Bendigo in October.

The move comes on the back of submissions from Bendigo Senior Secondary College and the Bendigo Education Council urging Emeritus Professor Halsey to look to the city as a model for other communities.

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The BEC is comprised of Bendigo principals from across the public, Catholic and independent sectors and its chairman, Darren McGregor, said it was a model that could provide valuable feedback to the review.

“The main aim of our submission was to say to the people doing this review, we think we’ve got something pretty unique to offer here because we’ve got all the sectors and all the age levels meeting in a good collegiate relationship and we think we’re doing some unique things here,” he said.

“Secondly we think we’re a good place where if they want to trial things or get further information on things we can provide them with that in one place.”

The review will investigate the “key barriers and challenges” in rural and regional education, including issues of “aspiration and access” which Mr McGregor said aligned with the BEC’s mission statement, which sought to “raise aspirations for young people across the city”.

“I think part of it is visibility of the bigger picture, in Melbourne you have so many of the big universities, you have the city centre, people see the bigger world – for a lot of our students they see Bendigo as this huge city and this is it, it’s the size of the pond if you like,” he said.

“As an example of that, we had four kids here go down to a science expo which one of the hospitals ran and they came back inspired and going ‘I didn’t know you could do this and do that’.

“They see the bigger world and they come back and think ‘Yeah, I can make a difference in that bigger world’.”

Mr McGregor welcomed the news the review would spend time in Bendigo as “exciting” for the region’s principals, who would now have a voice in the national conversation.

“That’s good that we get on that Australian conversation because I think we’re doing good things in Bendigo,” he said.