Education: Finding your solution.

Education is a national, state, AND local issue, which means that there are LOADS of people you can talk to about it.

Many school specific decisions are actually made by the local school, so in most scenarios YOU have access to everyone you need to talk to about getting something changed.

If you don't think you can do it on your own, talk to your friends and family and ask them to help you.

Student support

To increase the amount of support students get in schools, there are a few approaches you could take:

• Principals and school leadership actually have a lot of say over how the school is run. It is their job to make the school, and your experience of school, better. Tell your principal you want a school support officer set up at your school, or give them some ideas for how else they can support students.

• Start your own group to support other students. If LGBTQI student support is important to you, why not start a group of LGBTQI students and allies?

• Talk to local businesses about ways they can support your school. Maybe they could donate food for a breakfast club, or help you fundraise for something.

The most important thing to remember is that you need to keep talking to people. If the first person doesn't offer support, find someone else. Remember also that while others can help you achieve things, a lot of the work will need to come from you!

Building better life skills

Trying to make the things you learn in school more relevant to real life can be approached in a number of ways:

• Talk to your MP (state) about the content that you learn at school, and tell them how you want it to change.

• Talk to your principal and school leadership about getting access to more careers advice. This could be in the form of a teacher already working at the school, a new appointment, or even connecting students to support outside of school (like universities) to discuss life after school.

Uni and TAFE fees

This is a big issue that can be tackled at a federal, state, and local level.

• Get involved with your student union or student reps, and make fees a priority area

• Push for more services to be free or low cost on campus

• Write to your MP and tell them that keeping student fees down is a priority, and that it will impact the way you choose to vote in the next election.