Discussing the big issues

Importantly, then, schools need to provide opportunities for students to not only develop their critical thinking skills to become the future problem solvers, but they also need to empower students to have the confidence to stand up, develop coherent arguments, and use their voice to advocate for change. There are several activities the school offers students to develop these skills outside of the curriculum across both primary and secondary schools.

In 2022, the school participated in the first Dialogues@School, an initiative designed to promote student views and voices to their wider school community on issues that matter to them and which ultimately connect to global issues and events – a fitting concept that articulates well with St Margaret’s identity as a ‘local school with a global outlook’.

Dialogues@School is a significant pedagogic initiative stemming from The Brisbane Dialogues organisation, which works with individual schools to conduct their own dialogue events on a youthfocused topic.

Initiatives like Dialogues@School provide an opportunity to foster students critical thinking capacity, prompting them to engage with important issues in thoughtful, moderate, attentive, and reasoned ways. Further, the project’s design enables students to develop their interpersonal skills within public communication to articulate complex ideas and hone the art of finding consensus. St Margaret’s students were able to suggest and develop several topics and issues relevant both to their daily lives, as well as the wider, if not global, community.

For the inaugural Dialogues event at St Margaret’s, students Kate Bloomfield, Amelia Butler-Wood, Holly Marchant, Imogen Elliott and Annette Chan took part in a thought-provoking discussion on the nominated topic, ‘What’s wrong with TikTok?’ The students worked with Ms Theodora Le Souquet, managing director of Canaria Technologies and current member of the McKinsey Online Executive Panel, whose expertise as a moderator and extensive career experience allowed for moderation that provoked rich exploration of the question, examining issues from privacy, censorship and cyber-security to misinformation and online-extremism.

The school’s partnership with Brisbane Dialogues continues this year, giving more students the chance to engage with big ideas in a way that centres student voice through meaningful discourse. Another 2022 event which promoted student engagement with the big issues was the Middle School Ethics Olympiad, which provides students with a creative vehicle for developing skills in communication, critical thinking and respectful discourse while dealing with interesting and contentious ethical issues. Last year, a group of Year 9 students competed in the event, presenting their position on a range of case studies, including how citizenship should be awarded, the use of nuclear energy, and how we might achieve an ethical approach to recycling clothes. St Margaret’s students showcased their critical thinking, understanding of ethical theories and appreciation of diverse perspectives, with one team – Addison Grant-Taylor, Arnika Di Bella and Kate Bateman – taking out the Gold Medal. The team subsequently went on to compete in the 2023 International Ethics Olympiad held online in February against teams from around the world such as New Zealand, Hong Kong, India and Singapore, where, while not placing, they did a fantastic job and had a great experience.

Similarly in the primary school, Years 5 and 6 students participated in the 2022 Optiminds Challenge, which presents those with a passion for learning and problem solving with the chance to showcase their skills and talents. A team was entered into each category – Social Science and Language Literature. Each team embraced the challenges at the regional level with the Literature and Language team selected for the state finals.

On the first day of the two-day state finals, the team shared (at a market style event), a project they had created, which was an app designed to support mental health. On the second day, within a three-hour timeframe, they created a play based on a scenario, as well as responding to a spontaneous task. Working collaboratively and creatively, the team placed first against teams Queenslandwide. This was an amazing achievement for Allegra Pople, Isabella Goodrick, Lily Tribe, Gigi Bissett, Isobel Stobie, Chloe Nheu and Ally Cowley.

The art of Debating can be traced back to the philosophical and political debates of Ancient Greece. It is a challenging yet highly beneficial art to pursue, and can lead to, amongst many benefits, improved higher-order and critical thinking skills, cognitive flexibility, increased confidence, and superior team-building skills. In the secondary school, teams across all year levels competed in the Queensland Debating Union Competition in 2022, with two Year 11 teams making the knockout finals.

In the primary school, a precursor to Year 6 debating and part of their primary leadership preparation is a Year 5 public speaking activity. While public speaking is part of classroom learning, girls also can elect to prepare for and participate in two afternoons of competition with sister school St Aidan’s, giving them the chance to finesses their skills in preparing a speech and delivering that speech in front of an audience, as well as learning the art of really listening to others.

This experience gives them more confidence to join the Debating Club in Year 6, of which one third of the cohort elected to do last year, participating in two debates with St Aidan’s. Our Year 11 debaters mentored the students, teaching them how to research arguments, write persuasive speeches, consider rebuttals, and enhance their public speaking skills (read more on page 41). Many of these girls have now taken their new-found love of debating into the secondary school. Due to this interest, for the first time this year, the school has entered a Year 7 team in the Brisbane Girls Debating Association Competition – a short-prep training/debate intensive that enhances in-situ (on-thespot) collaborative critical thinking.

We are confident our students will take all the skills developed through these activities and become the future problems solvers in a world where everyone is voicing an opinion, yet very few are backing it up with intelligent, cohesive dialogue to support their case.

Sent to Brisbane to care and minister for women and girls in the 1800s, it followed that when they founded the school in 1895, it was dedicated to girls. Extensive research has since proven the academic, social and emotional benefits of an all-girls’ education.

Academic Success

Girls’ schools achieve stronger academic results. According to analysis of the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results by the Alliance of Girls’ Schools Australasia: ‘Girls from girls’ schools in Australia and New Zealand outperformed girls from co-educational schools on all academic measures of science, mathematics and literacy.’