Armidale Secondary College cohort shine at state school challenge

Passionate advocates Emelia Kelly, Alma Kanety, Adrika Bagchi, Nyla Chemane and Rachel Gooley from Armidale Secondary College took out the secondary school prize in the advocate stream for their proposed primary school environmental education program.

"We think education has so much power. If people can learn about sustainability, they can act on it," Alma said.

The team believed that primary school children need to be better taught about the consequences of inaction on the environment, and developed a program that also incorporated take home activities to enable the learning to continue with families.

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Some of the home learning ideas included low water use challenges and plastic-free lunchboxes.

"Everyone we surveyed about the program was really positive," Nyla added, revealing that their teacher was approaching local primary schools to trial the Environmental Learning for Kids program in 2022.

The Game Changer Challenge encourages students to develop critical and reflective thinking skills while collaborating in a team by solving a real-world 'wicked' problem. This year, almost 400 teams of students were asked to tackle the problem of humans having unlimited needs, but the planet having limited capacity to satisfy them.

Minister for Education and Early Childhood Learning Sarah Mitchell congratulated the winners for their originality and innovation.

"The students from Armidale Secondary College are role models in their school and community. With their creativity and enthusiasm for sustainability, I have no doubt our future is in safe hands," Ms Mitchell said.

"They've embraced the design thinking and future-focused skills that have enabled them to become creative problem solvers and I can't wait to see the impact their [creativity/advocacy] brings in years to come.

"I also congratulate the winners in the three other categories, and the teams who made it to the finals."

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