Advocacy

To advocate is to speak or act in support of or in defence of somebody, a community, or a cause.

    Our advocacy work

    VicSRC advocates for all Victorian school-aged students, no matter your year level or what type of school you go to. VicSRC's advocacy work is led by students, including the Student Executive Advisory Committee and VicSRC Ambassadors.

    Sometimes our advocacy is based around specific issues, like the Congress priorities. A lot of the advocacy work we do is ensuring that student voices are heard in every aspect of decision-making in education.

    We sit on many different Department of Education advisory groups to make sure this happens, including:

    • LGBTIQ Education Reference Group

    • Respectful Relationships Advisory Group

    • Marrung Central Governance Advisory Committee

    • Complaints Management Reference Group

    • Education State in Schools Guiding Coalition

    We also meet regularly with the Minister for Education so they hear directly from students about the most important issues!

    Our current advocacy campaigns

    Policy Platform

    VicSRC's Policy Platform outlines nine goals VicSRC has for education in Victoria.

    A colourful image of interlocking puzzle pieces. Each puzzle piece is one of VicSRC's advocacy priorities. The puzzle pieces are filled with hand-drawn text and images.
    Advocacy Platform 2022

    At the start of 2021, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic that came hard on the heels of devastating bushfires, VicSRC declared a mental health crisis for Victorian students. As students reported that disruptions to learning and extended lockdowns had exacerbated mental health and wellbeing issues we called on the system to provide more support and to make sure good mental health and wellbeing was the main priority of schools. To ensure that students and student voice were at the centre of these conversations we focussed in on mental health and wellbeing in education at Congress 2021, looking at the biggest barriers identified by students and formulating student-driven solutions.

    Learning from remote learning

    VicSRC surveyed 650 students about their experiences of remote and online learning throughout 2020. We developed several reports and recommendations about how to improve education for all students in the future.

    Students and school governance

    Student involvement in all levels of decision-making is a big focus for VicSRC. Following a campaign by VicSRC, student members are now compulsory on all school councils in Victorian government secondary schools with Year 7 and above.

    These resources have more information about students and school governance:

    Policy submissions and research

    VicSRC regularly writes policy submissions with and for students, and sometimes commissions research about student-focused issues. You can read some of our most recent pieces of work below.