Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the break I had my second student leaders forum for Lalor, and I wanted to share with the House that story today. I want to thank Nadia Bettio, who's the principal of the brand new Tarneit Rise Primary School, which opened this year in my electorate. So far it only goes to grade 2, but they warmly hosted schools from across the electorate. We had 160 students across the day. I spent the morning with primary students and the afternoon with secondary students, as usual, and I heard about their leading journeys. They shared stories about their school and about what they've been doing in their schools to improve their school culture and school community, having planned that at the first session in March. It was a great day, one I obviously enjoyed. It gets me back with students talking about the things they care about.

I also want to thank the schools that attended—the primary and secondary schools—for going out of their way, as well as the staff who came with the students and the parents who are sometimes dropping off their children at a different school. It gives us the opportunity to pull all those schools together, share stories across our community and share with one another what our school values are. This is one of the most important things about doing this forum—not only do the kids get prepared to be leaders and get to share those stories; they get to talk to one another about what their school values are, they are surprisingly positive and consistent.