Northern Bay College vice-captain Ashton Stonehouse is the Geelong region’s only representative on the Victorian Student Representative Council in 2025.
The Victorian Student Representative Council was created by students to be a voice for students at the highest levels of decision making in Victorian education. It comprises 15 secondary school-aged students, who make decisions collaboratively with a group of six adults about how VicSRC operates, what programs it offers and how it hears from students about education.
Ashton’s appointment followed a written application and interview, in which she was able to talk about her school leadership roles over several years.
In the interview she also talked about the College leadership team’s plans and how she gets regular feedback from her own community and other students in her program, with the aim of making it better.
“I explained that I was the only person in our senior leadership team in VCE Vocational Major and how for me, that was really important,” Ashton said. “It wasn’t about the fact that I got picked, it was about the fact that somebody from the VM program got picked and that was really important representation.”
“I really see this as an opportunity to change the curriculum for any future students that go into the program, and it’ll benefit so many people.
“Rather than me going ‘I’ll just do this because it looks really good on my resume or it’ll be really good for me’, I was aware that anything that I do in the VicSRC will not directly benefit me. It’ll benefit next year’s Year 12, the Year 11s after that, and everyone else really and that was the whole point for me.”
Ashton said the VicSRC’s mission to ‘stand with and for students to elevate their voices to be heard’ is “a really big thing” for her. “That is the reason that I do leadership,” she said. “Giving not just myself, but other people that platform is something really important. It’s our education. It is our future, and we should be the ones who build it.”
Ashton said she’d like see change around the stigma of choosing to do Vocational Major rather than mainstream VCE. “I lost friends because of the program that I chose, but I just wanted something different.”
When she leaves school, Ashton wants to work in healthcare. “I’d love to be able to help other people,” she said. “Whether that be paramedicine or a nurse in the emergency room or just anything emergency health-related.”
In the meantime, Ashton will continue to show leadership and help set the path for future students.