Australia’s Top 100 Private Schools: Northern Territory’s future leaders share their goals and dreams
The future leaders being educated at the Territory’s top private schools share their hopes, dreams and fears for their generation.
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The Territory’s future leaders have shared their thoughts, dreams and fears as their generation prepares to enter adulthood post-schooling.
School captains from the Territory’s top-ranked fee-paying schools share what they think the future has in store for them. They’re hopeful and optimistic in these uncertain times.
Here are the Territory’s future leaders.
The Essington School
Future leaders Athanasia Papandonakis and Methuli Kulasekara are Year 12 captains at The Essington School, the top-ranked private school in the Northern Territory.
The pair share hopes of becoming doctors.
Methuli comes from a medical family, while Athanasia will be “the first in her bloodline” to become a doctor.
“This shows I have the opportunities my parents and grandparents didn’t,” Athanasia said.
“That means a lot for me because my family migrated to Australia from Greece for us to have better opportunities.”
The two young women said their generation faced both the challenges and advantages of evolving technologies such as AI.
“Technology is becoming a big part of everything,” Methuli said.
“It’s both a concern and an opportunity.
“There is a learning curve for our generation to harness this technology responsibly.
“I hope we can rise to the occasion,” she said.
Both leaders are optimistic about their generation’s future.
“The future holds everything for us,“ Athanasia said.
“There’s a massive world out there, and I know we’re all going to take it in our stride.”
St Phillip’s College
In the Red Centre, St Philip’s College captains Luke Willcocks and Keely Hayward say they feel equipped to become future leaders.
“Maybe just the way I was raised, I was a very ‘I want to be a leader’ kind of person,” Keely said.
“So I came to St Philip’s and saw all the leadership opportunities and I was like, ‘yeah, that’s what I want to do’.”
With the end of school imminent for the pair, both have their eyes set on university.
Keely has her heart set on forensic science, while Luke is considering engineering.
What type of engineering, however, will be a decision made after a gap year, he said.
Both hope to end up back in Alice after completing their studies, but admit a tight job market could make the prospect difficult.
They’re also equally optimistic for the future, but Mr Willcocks said “we’ve dealt a tough part of history to deal with”.
“But I think I’m looking forward to working with that upcoming generation to solve the things that I’ve been seeing developed throughout my childhood.”
Haileybury Rendall School
Haileybury Rendall School captains Felix Bender and Stephanie Waugh are both optimistic and pessimistic about the future.
These two budding students see AI and rapidly developing technology as both an opportunity and a risk to their generation’s future.
“Technology keeps us connected and helps us to learn about the world so easily,” Felix said.
“But tools like AI also run the risk of taking away our ability to think for ourselves.”
Stephanie agreed, worrying that overreliance on AI could lead her generation to lose core skills.
“Through overreliance some skills may get lost,” she said.
“But it also provide a lot of opportunities – it’s about managing technology well.”
The two future leaders shared anxiety about climate change.
“It’s really scary growing up knowing there’s all these climate targets made that governments are not adhering to,” Stephanie said.
“I think it’s every generation’s responsibility to do better than the previous one, and I do have hope we can do that.”
Felix agreed with her optimistic tone.
“If we keep accelerating like our ancestors did, then there’s so much potential for our generation,” he said.
“Hopefully we can make life better for all humans.”
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Originally published as Australia’s Top 100 Private Schools: Northern Territory’s future leaders share their goals and dreams
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