Student Voice

VicSRC Congress 2019

During the second week of the school holidays, we attended the 2019 VicSRC Congress. Congress is a student-led and student-focussed conference. It brings together secondary students from year seven to year twelve from all types of schools around Victoria.

At the beginning of Congress, students had the opportunity to pitch what they are passionate about changing in the education system to the rest of the Congress delegates. From the many pitches heard, the top 12 were chosen and deemed as the 2019 VicSRC Action Groups. From there, delegates were able to join the action group they were most passionate about. Over the 3 days, delegates worked in their action groups to identify the main issues and reasonable solutions to these issues that could be implemented with the help of VicSRC in 2020. On the last day, there was an open morning at Melbourne University where stakeholders, such as other Victorian students, parliamentary members and Department of Education and Training officials, came together to hear all about the action groups, what progress they made over Congress and what they were proposing to change in the system.

After all the action groups had the opportunity to pitch to all the stakeholders physically present and also present via a Facebook Livestream, students across Victoria had the opportunity to vote for their top five priority topics that the VicSRC executive student members would then focus on during their term.

The top five priorities finally decided were sustainability education, equitable funding for schools, real-life skills, politics 101 and climate crisis.

We are so excited to have had each of our action groups actually voted in by other Victorian students as part of the top five priority list. Over Congress, we also had the opportunity to attend workshops in order to further develop our leadership skills and gain helpful tips in order to improve our own school leadership program and the prevalence of student agency in our local communities.

The 2019 VicSRC Congress was an amazing experience for us three that we will remember for a very long time. It was an awesome feeling to be around such a powerhouse of student voice and to meet and connect with other students who were also passionate advocates for real change. It was a beneficial and enlightening experience and we hope that we can implement what we have learnt at DSC.

Emma M. 10H, Jess R. 10I and Dylan C. 10A