One of the biggest issues I have perceived in previous years of the Palmerston North Boys High School Student Forum was a lack of mobility, a lack of actual student communication and an attitude towards it that caused it to be almost wholly ineffective at actually representing the PNBHS student community.

In 2019, as Deputy Head Boy of PNBHS, I stepped up alongside our student representative on the Board Of Trustees, David Kakrada to install a strong, communicative and effective Student Forum for the 2019 school year. We handpicked the forum, focusing on diversity, loyalty and passion for the school to create a dedicated feedback and discussion forum for the wider school community. We intend to document our mistakes and provide a path for future student leaders to operate the student forum to its greatest potential.

We also recognise that there is always work to be done, so in the 2019 school year we will have a focus on service to the school and community via the actions of the Student Forum. Specifically, we have a focus in areas where we can enact positive social change (e.g. bullying prevention campaigns) or make use of our diversity to target support programmes towards excluded minority groups.