On Thursday 10 April, Principals and students representing 33 schools from Adelaide and across the state travelled to the Festival’s Centre’s Children’s Artspace to attend the Champion Schools Postcards Awards!
Some came from as far away as Lake Wangary and Lincoln Gardens on the Eyre Peninsula, others from Gladstone and Orroroo in the mid-north, the Riverland, Stansbury on the Yorke Peninsula, Watervale, Mount Barker, McClaren Vale and Kangaroo Island. They stood alongside their city counterparts as representatives of the 44 ‘Champion Schools’ who have participated in the Commissioner’s Student Voice Postcards initiative every year since it commenced in 2019.
Principal Rick Noack and two students Melisa and Robbie from Para Hills West Primary School shared insights into their experience of participating in Postcards, while DreamBIG Festival Director, Georgi Paech, told us why she wanted to include the postcards in this year’s milestone 50th DreamBIG Children’s Festival.
Principal Noack said “the value of this program in supporting our school cannot be overstated. It enhances our educational environment by promoting inclusivity and diversity of thought. It brings our community together, as we all share in the pride of our students’ achievements. The postcards serve as a testament to the creativity and resilience of our young people, and they inspire us all to listen more closely to the voices of the next generation.”
Robbie shared that “the postcards make me feel how important my opinion is and that they are helping our community to be safe and a happy environment.”
Melisa shared that she thinks “it’s great that Helen believes children have opinions and need to be heard because not all adults think little kids have an opinion.”
Over the six years of the initiative, the Commissioner has received an extraordinary 82,544 postcards from children attending 576 primary and combined schools across South Australia. This tremendous response has happened because of the support of school principals, educators, class teachers and SSO’s. Together with their students, schools have helped the Commissioner produce this large and important dataset, which will continue to be of great value to researchers, policy makers, and decision makers.
Read the suite of Things That Matter Reports to find out what children in this age-group have told the Commissioner matters most to them at this time in their lives.
