The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that in 2023, approximately 107,537 years of life were lost due to suicide. 82.5% of these deaths were people under 65 years of age. Unsurprisingly, suicide is the lead cause of death in children aged 5-17. As a 15-year-old teenager who just started Year 9, I found these statistics incredibly hard to believe – until I reflected on the mental health of myself and my peers over the years. I understood it, but it didn’t necessarily make sense. Why is this so common? Being a teenager is hard, of course, but this surface-level answer I’ve been told all my life didn’t suffice this time, and so after extensive research, I’ve finally found a better one: mental ill-health education in the school system is practically non-existent.

This theory is one I’ve believed in since I was giving a speech at my primary school’s annual public speaking competition when I was 11 years old, but I needed more evidence before I could be certain. Upon doing the only logical thing I could think of and reading the entire Victorian Curriculum, I can safely say that revisiting it would be in the best interest of Victoria’s youth and their ongoing mental health.

To put it short: I'm in the process of adjusting certain elements of the Victorian Curriculum to enable for better mental ill-health education and support for students.

The current curriculum is broken up into 8 areas: The Arts, Languages, English, Mathematics, Health and Physical Education, Science, Humanities and Technologies, but the one this outline is focusing on is Health and Physical Education.

The Health and Physical Education area of the Victorian Curriculum is essentially broken up into two ‘strands’, and then further into ‘sub-strands’, each a more detailed explanation of what’s required than the last. As I’m sure you can guess, the two strands highlight the split between theory lessons and practical ones, or Health and P.E classes. It is mentioned that each strand has its own ‘priority area’, the two provided being ‘swimming and water safety’ and ‘respectful relationships’.

According to the Royal Lifesaving Society Australia, in the 2023-24 financial year, 323 Australians total died from drowning. In 2024, the Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing states that 795 people committed suicide in Victoria alone. While these statistics do prove a point, I am by no means saying that water education is not a crucial part of schooling in Australia. The problem with trying to combine both health and physical education into one category is that there is simply not enough space to prioritise everything required, hence why I have essentially re-outlined the Victorian Curriculum – or, at least, I’ve altered the Health and Physical Education area to better support the teenagers it’s designed for. While it is far from complete, I have put a lot of thought into how to design a program that is efficient, thorough, and doable.

If merging both health and physical education is impossible to do at the same time as maintaining a thorough and effective curriculum where students can learn about both topics in depth, why not just separate them? Splitting the Health and Physical Education area in half would give the Victorian Curriculum a total of 9 areas of focus: The Arts, Languages, English, Mathematics, Health, Physical Education, Science, Humanities and Technologies. This is the primary concept of the rewrite I’m completing, and through doing it I have discovered just how much benefit we as students would get out of prioritising mental ill-health education.

For the rewrite, I have included both the required practical classes and the relevant theory topics in the Physical Education area. Theory topic examples include nutrition, drugs and alcohol, first aid, etc. Including the theory element of physical education in this area helps to further outline the difference between mental and physical education – another distinction yet to be clearly made in the previously existing curriculum currently in use. The new outline shows a clear split between physical and mental health related topics and keeping these in their respective areas (despite being theoretical/practical) is the best way to remain effective and assist in educating students in the most logical way.

Moving over to the Health area of the curriculum, the topics included are more concise and the way they differ from the theory topics covered in the Physical Education area is clear. Some examples of the topics include relationships, identity, sexuality, mental health, and, of course, mental ill-health.

It is important to make the distinction between the subtopics mental health and mental ill-health, a synonym for mental illness. The definition of ‘mental health’, as provided by the glossary included in the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s breakdown of the curriculum is as follows: “a person’s cognitive and thinking processes, for example their capacity to think coherently, express thoughts and feelings, and respond constructively to situations”.

This definition does not entirely line up with the Oxford Reference’s definition of ‘mental illness’: “Mental illnesses are illnesses characterized by the presence of mental pathology: that is, disturbances of mental functioning, analogous to disturbances of bodily functioning. Like physical illness the concept is, therefore, fundamentally evaluative and linked to issues of social control and regulation.”

This clash (or lack thereof) leaves room for miscommunication when it comes to understanding the current curriculum. While there is mention of mental health subtopics being explored in the current curriculum, upon further investigation it is clear that ‘mental health’ is not a synonym for ‘mental illness’ in this scenario. This is why, with the new structure, the curriculum will not only have space to incorporate a mental ill-health education program into it, but to also prioritise it and properly educate our youth on the leading cause of child (5-17 years of age) deaths in Australia: mental health issues.

The Victorian Curriculum has outlined what is expected to be taught from levels Foundation-Year 10. The rewrite has kept this structure, however, also has a new concept incorporated to further simplify the content outline and allow for easy understanding. The current curriculum often splits its content into 5 groups: Foundation, Year 1 & Year 2, Year 3 & Year 4, Year 5 & Year 6, Year 7 & Year 8, and Year 9 & Year 10. I have kept these groups when designing a mental ill-health education program, in order to make learning easier, more logical and more efficient. Each group is assigned an 'Essential Question', and the content taught is based around that question. These 5 subtopics (Who, What, Where, Why and How) all relate back to each other and ensure that, while this program begins at a young age, what is taught is age appropriate and relevant to the intended audience.

A further breakdown of what each Essential Question means:

Foundation, Year 1, Year 2
Who?
Due to their young age, beginning mental ill-health education by teaching kids to identify, name and express their emotions is the best way to start. This acts as a great foundation for learning technical terms and identifying symptoms of mental illness later on in life.

Year 3, Year 4
What?
This age is a good one to begin looking into the basics of what mental ill-health is. This also explores some basic strategies the kids are encouraged to try out to help them combat the tricky feelings they learnt to label in earlier years. What actually is mental ill-health? What can you do? What are symptoms? Young education and normalising talking about it from an early age is key to breaking the stigma and setting kids up for safe teen years later on.

Year 5, Year 6
Where?
Now that they’re older, diving deeper into the whereabouts mental ill-health takes place is doable. Where actually is mental illness in your brain? Where can it be seen, or found? This further solidifies their knowledge one what mental ill-health is, too, as learning about where it can be found further cements the idea that it exists in their heads. This also comes in handy for further learning in Year 9 & Year 10.

Year 7, Year 8
Why?
Secondary school is tough, and it’s the perfect time to cover why mental illness may occur in the first place. External factors – what are they, how can they be identified, and what is their impact? Does genetics play a role in mental ill-health? Why does it? This exploration of always asking ‘why’ something is the way it is sets them up for the later, more in-depth learning about the development of mental ill-health in the coming years.

Year 9, Year 10
How?
Retouching on the science element of mental ill-health left behind in Years 5 & 6, the ‘How’ component looks at how mental illness actually develops. How does it develop? How does it go? How does it affect one’s actions and thoughts? Going back over all previously learnt information in greater detail and asking, ‘how does it happen?’ is reinforcing the information, and setting the kids up for a lifetime of knowledge on their mental health and how to maintain it.
 

This is still a very early draft of what it could look like, but the key ideas will likely remain the same. I'm spending a lot of time tweaking this outline and will attempt to update this petition as regularly as possible - until then, any and all support is greatly appreciated and I'm hoping to get some promotional social media accounts up and running soon. Thank you :-)