Wise Words With 

Authentic Student Voice

Students having a voice is one of the catch cries of the modern age. It’s a great idea because it means students have ownership of their schooling. We see the calls for voice in many areas of life, including the environment, indigenous matters, religious matter, schooling etc. 

Unfortunately, the problem with voice is that often problems are so complex and involving people who have a simplistic understanding of the situation does not yield great results. An example of this was at a colleague’s school (in NSW) where the students wanted to save the environment, so they decided the school would have a day of no electricity. Given that all the textbooks were online, the teachers then spent significant time, electricity and paper, printing out worksheets for the students to utilise during class time so they would have meaningful activities. The concept was well-meaning; however, the reality and the execution was self-defeating.

I contrast this with a suggestion from a student in Year 9, Patrick M. Last year, Mr Lee approached me with concerns raised by Patrick regarding our lack of renewable energy production in the school. In speaking with Patrick, he was suggesting that we have a very large roof area and we should utilise that roof space to instal solar panels and help lower our CO 2footprint. 

Patrick is absolutely right. In fact, schools are ideal places to generate electricity using solar panels. Given that schools use most of their electricity during the daylight hours, it makes lots of sense for them to instal solar and no real need to instal batteries.

At the same time that Patrick was suggesting this, a funding opportunity arose from the Association of Independent Schools who administer much of the government grants to independent schools, and we were able to secure some funding. 

Our board members, MrTallon and Mr Hustwit, worked through the quotes to make a recommendation and over theOctober holidays, we have had just under 100kW of solar panels installed. The government funding contributed just over half of the total costs which we were very appreciative of. We now have a sizeable solar panel array on the top of our TAS building. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Patrick for his ideas and Mr Lee, Mr Hustwit, Mr Tallon and Mr Hefferan for their contributions to make this project a reality. This has been an authentic voice contribution from Patrick which has resulted in valuable outcomes for the environment and Nowra Christian School.

Mr Jolliffe