Students as Partners in Improvement honoured for design excellence

Education Services Australia is proud to celebrate the recognition of Beyond Voice: Students as Partners in Improvement with a Good Design Gold Award for Social Impact. The award recognises a project as one of the top five in its category, showcasing design excellence, innovation and impact. It’s a distinguished honour within the broader awards program, reserved for projects that go beyond the standard criteria for a Good Design Award. 

Led by Summer Howarth and John Cleary, the project has transformed how students and educators work together to drive meaningful change through the Northern Territory Learning Commission (NTLC). Over the past decade, the NTLC has guided students and educators to co-design improvements to their schools, and deepened the role that students play in shaping their own learning and school environments. 

At its core, Students as Partners in Improvement involves the people most affected by school improvement decisions in shaping how those decisions are made. It helps make school improvement more fair, relevant and real. 

The recognition comes as the work enters a new chapter. Summer and John are now collaborating with ESA to build on the success of the Northern Territory Learning Commission and to expand partnerships with students for improvement on a national scale. 

In the weeks ahead, ESA will share stories from Tasmania and the ACT, where schools and systems are already embedding Students as Partners in Improvement into their own structures. These stories will explore how they're putting the approach into practice and how it's helping to create meaningful change. 

During November, as the Northern Territory Learning Commission celebrates its tenth anniversary, we'll take a deeper look at how the movement began and how its lessons continue to shape the way improvement happens across the region. 

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