Humanities
Model United Nations Assembly at McKinnon Secondary College
Kilbreda students from Years 10 to 12 once again participated in the annual Model UN Assembly at McKinnon Secondary College. Our students were allocated the following UN member states:
People’s Republic of China
Gladys Mpakame, Isabelle La Prade, Vanessa Mok and Alex Bonsall
Senegal
Amy Goodchild, Alannah Banik, Alivia Chapman and Ruby Thomas
Sweden
Bridget Dix, Liana Kapalkoff, Kyla Avontuur and Laura Cussigh.
On the day all teams were presenting their country’s views about the UN Sustainable Development Goal Number 4, 'Quality Education for all'. Students gave up many lunchtimes to work with their teachers to do an enormous amount of research for this. Many thanks to Mr Grosso who accompanied the teams on the day and assisted with research, along with Dr Avitabile, Ms Chuck and Ms Langford.
The teams spent the day delivering position statements and arguing about amendments to a proposed resolution. They worked with many student teams from across the state and were widely commended for their knowledge, poise and ability to debate on this day. They are to be commended for their efforts.
Below is an excerpt from the UN Sustainable Development Goal webpage about the goal under debate and an article from some of the students who recorded their observations of the day.
“Education enables upward socioeconomic mobility and is a key to escaping poverty. Over the past decade, major progress was made towards increasing access to education and school enrollment rates at all levels, particularly for girls. Nevertheless, about 260 million children were still out of school in 2018 — nearly one fifth of the global population in that age group. And more than half of all children and adolescents worldwide are not meeting minimum proficiency standards in reading and mathematics.
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, a majority of countries announced the temporary closure of schools, impacting more than 91 per cent of students worldwide. By April 2020, close to 1.6 billion children and youth were out of school. And nearly 369 million children who rely on school meals needed to look to other sources for daily nutrition.
Never before have so many children been out of school at the same time, disrupting learning and upending lives, especially the most vulnerable and marginalised. The global pandemic has far-reaching consequences that may jeopardize hard won gains made in improving global education.”
https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/education/
There is an increase in urgency with regards to the achievement of this goal due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here are some words (video below) from the UN Secretary General Guterres which speak to the potential impacts this pandemic could have particularly on young women across the least developed nations of the world.
Carolyn Callaghan
Learning Leader: Humanities
Student Reflection
On Thursday 20 May, we were lucky enough to participate in a simulated United Nations General Assembly. Kilbreda represented different countries around the world; Senegal, China and Sweden. We had to consider our country's viewpoint on the topic of 'Quality Education for all'.
In the weeks leading up to the Assembly, we were assigned our countries and researched and gathered information about our nation's stance on this issue. Each group developed their standpoint and considered whether to make an amendment to the resolution.
On the day, we travelled to McKinnon Secondary College and began with position statements from each country. Every country gave a three minute speech on their views which allowed us to work out which countries were possible allies and which were foes. Later in the day. we began the caucus session which allowed us to debate against different nations over various subtopics within the main objective. This led to some contentious arguments between developing and developed nations. Some of the main issues on the day were COVID-19 and child labour.
Overall, the day allowed us to further improve our negotiation and public speaking skills and educate us on global issues. We would like to say a big thank you to Mrs Callaghan for organising the event, Mr Grosso for supervising us on the day and Miss Chuck and Dr Avitabile for assisting us in our research before the day.
Alannah Banik and
Amy Goodchild
Year 11