Gunnedah South Public School will next week travel to Sydney to face the state’s best young minds in the NSW Department of Education ‘Game Changer Challenge’.

The Gunnedah primary school is one of just 12 across NSW selected to take part in the challenge final which tests skills in design thinking, collaboration, critical thinking, empathy, and creativity.

Open to public schools across the state, the challenge centres on discovering solutions for a real-world, wicked problem by applying classroom learning.

Each year, teams of five students work together to devise solutions for a real-world problem. This year’s ‘Wicked Question’ was: How might we ensure sustainable futures for all?

South’s assistant principal Sally Hathway said the school originally entered three teams in this year’s competition – Mission Earth United, The Leafy Warriors, and the Wicked Warriors.

Each team completed two design sprints to develop and refine their ideas. Mission Earth United, comprising Macey Dalessandro, Elena Simson, Thomas Hathway, Alex Budden, and Nicholas Swain, focused on tackling plastic pollution.

“Initially, they aimed to eliminate plastic pollution everywhere but soon realised the importance of addressing the issue incrementally, starting within our school community,” Ms Hathway said.

“Through extensive interviews with staff and students, they identified that a major concern was the small plastic wrappers from juice poppers littering the playground. When challenged to collect these wrappers over two weeks, they were surprised by the volume gathered.

“This insight led them to narrow their focus and refine their ‘how might we’ question to ‘how might we redesign juice popper packaging to eliminate the need for straws and plastic wrappers, enabling manufacturers to create a more sustainable, environmentally friendly future?'”

In Design Sprint Two, students created video pitches which were then submitted to a panel of industry partners. From about 450 entries across primary and high schools, Gunnedah South’s ‘Mission Earth United’ was thrilled to be selected among the top 20 entries.

Next week, the students will head to Sydney for Stage 3 of the design sprint at the Department of Education’s Parramatta office. There, they will engage in an intensive prototyping, pitching, and partnering sprint over three days. The event will conclude with an ideas expo, where teams will present their solutions to judges and industry experts. They are competing for five awards: Primary Champion, Teamwork Award, Prototype Award, UNICEF Voice for Impact Award and Canva Force for Good Award.

“As a school, we are incredibly proud of the dedication shown by all our teams and delighted that one of our teams has advanced to this prestigious stage,” Ms Hathway said.

To view the ‘Mission Earth United’ submission from Gunnedah South, including the video pitch, visit: https://mission-earth-united.my.canva.site/