HomeAustralian NewsStudent voice program reduces suspensions and empowers college students

Student voice program reduces suspensions and empowers college students


Data from Yeronga State High’s annual studies reveals suspensions shot up throughout and after the pandemic, peaking in 2022, when the speed of mixed lengthy and quick suspensions was 30 per cent.

By 2024, this had dropped to about 11 per cent – under the Brisbane state highschool common.

The Education Department recorded a forty five per cent drop within the variety of all suspensions on the college between 2022 and 2024.

This equated to 129 fewer suspensions, regardless of enrolments rising by greater than 150 college students – or 20 per cent – throughout the identical two-year interval.

The college recorded one lengthy suspension in 2024 – a seven-year low within the variety of such suspensions – and a 90 per cent lower from 2022.

Annual studies additionally confirmed that on common, about 57 per cent of scholars at Brisbane state excessive faculties felt their opinions have been taken critically by academics and supporting workers.

About 62 per cent of Yeronga State High School college students felt their opinions have been taken critically.

This rose to about 90 per cent for the Queensland Academy for Creative Industries, which teaches college students from yr 10 and up, and Milpera State High School, a specialist college for college kids from linguistically various backgrounds who’ve lately arrived in Australia.

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“Providing a platform for younger individuals to talk and develop options collectively is a superb technique to encourage future leaders,” Langbroek stated.

“It’s nice to see college students gaining a way of delight in the best way they form their college.”

The college’s Horizons Women’s Hub, now in its third yr, was one other concept born from the summits.

The ladies’ group is open to present and former college students, who focus on household expectations, friendships, and challenges akin to managing features of their identification.

This yr this system received an Australian Education Award.

Yeronga yr 11 scholar Asha Abdelrahman Selat stated the conferences have been “a free area” that helped strengthen relationships between feminine college students.

“You can actually discuss … it’s nice to share and know you’re not going to be judged,” Selat stated.

Yeronga State High School began its student voice program in 2020 and its women’s hub in 2022, with a boys’ group to be launched in 2026.

Yeronga State High School started its scholar voice program in 2020 and its girls’s hub in 2022, with a boys’ group to be launched in 2026.Credit: Catherine Strohfeldt

“It’s a protected area. It’s not simply saying hello, I do know what [the other girls] are going by … [and] it’s nice seeing I’m not alone.”

She stated the conferences additionally enabled college students to keep up contact with the college’s alumni.

“Most of them, they’re doing what they needed to do [after school] … the stuff that they’d talked about, they’re going for it,” Selat stated.

The hub additionally brings in skilled audio system to deal with college students’ questions on tough matters akin to studying to talk assertively and understanding coercive management.

“I feel it’s a type of issues the place if we don’t create these areas for younger girls, they don’t have sufficient assets to do it for themselves,” Haswell-Smith stated.

She stated the ladies’s group this yr requested the college to create an identical program for male college students.

“They have been like, ‘the boys want this data too, they usually should be concerned’,” she stated.

During preliminary talks with college students and home violence advocate Michael Jeh, Haswell-Smith stated the college deliberate to construction the boys’ group otherwise, encouraging older college students to be position fashions for his or her youthful friends.

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