Each year, South Australia’s Commissioner for Children and Young People engages with children aged 8-12 years across the state through her Student Voice Postcards initiative. These postcards help inform her advocacy work, including her annual Things That Matter reports.

In her fourth Things That Matter report she draws on responses from 16,007 South Australian children who completed postcards in 2022.

These students came from 336 schools across the state – with this figure representing participation by more than half the schools in South Australia that have 8–12-year-old-students enrolled. 

Postcards were received by students from government, Catholic and independent schools across metropolitan, regional, rural, and remote parts of South Australia. They included children attending a diverse range of school types: primary schools, primary/secondary combined schools, Area schools, Special Education schools, and Aboriginal/Anangu schools.

The postcards asked children to respond to the following question prompts: 

1. The best thing about being a kid is … 
2. I worry about … 
3. I want grownups to know … 
4. The world would be better if …. 

Family and friends, caring for the environment and acting on climate change, school experiences, sickness and death, and kindness and equality, were all central to many of the children’s responses.