CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP COMPETITION:

Improving Student Knowledge and Understanding of Civics

The informed project is designed to build students’ understanding, skills, and confidence to effectively protect our democratic values and freedoms. It has been created using curriculum and syllabuses from across Australia to enable teachers to embed informed into their teaching programs. The informed project provides teachers with base resources to teach their chosen civics concept to their students, and then students will take this knowledge and put it into a contemporary context.

Through informed, students will develop the critical thinking skills needed to navigate current, real-world issues. By fostering open debate and encouraging thoughtful analysis, the program will empower young people to take an active role in protecting our freedoms and holding those in power to account.

With the help of 54 schools that have expressed an interest in the program, the Rule of Law Education Centre is currently running a pilot competition to be finished by 10 February 2025.

The Pilot version will consider the following topics: The Purpose of the Constitution (all years version) Rules and Laws (Years 5-8), Rights and Responsibilities (including Years 5-8 and Years 9-10 versions) and, the Characteristics of Effective Laws (Years 9-10 version). Based on their feedback, the final informed competition will be officially launched early 2025.

Competition Details

Student Instructions

Resources Years 5-8

Resources Years 9-10

Informed Competition Details

What is it and who can enter?

We’re inviting students from years 5-10 to create impactful, informative and non-political short videos that explore key topics in government, citizenship, democracy and laws in Australia.

Not only will your students gain valuable skills in communication, IT and critical thinking, they will be able to use these skills to help inform other students around Australia when their video is featured on our new social media channel for civics education and our YouTube page!

Does it cost anything? What do we win?

No! The competition is free. All students will be awarded either the Rule of Law Education Centre’s Emerging Citizen (years 5-8) or Ready Citizen (years 9-10) certificate. In addition, each year we will present a special award for the top 5 videos based on the number of views and engagement.

What support do you give teachers?

To assist teachers, we will provide an entry pack that contains:

a list of curriculum linked questions and topic areas for you to choose from,
factsheets for your chosen questions,
links to supporting resources and curriculum,
an entry form; and
video upload details.

Entries can be created in groups or by whole classes.

Is it curriculum aligned so I can use it in my subject programs?

Yes! To ensure that you can use this competition in your programming, the questions have been aligned with curriculum priorities, content and outcomes from across Australia, as well as key Australian civic readiness tests:

The Australian Curriculum v.9: HASS
The Victorian Curriculum version 2.0: The Humanities
The NSW Curriculum – Stages 3 and 5 History (released 2024) and Stage 5 Commerce Syllabus (2019)
The Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship (2012)
The NSW Civics and Citizenship Education Benchmarks for years 6 and 10 (2002)
The NAP-CC years 6 and 10 Demonstration Tests

This is an opportunity for students across Australia to contribute to a better understanding of how Australia’s democracy works – for all of our young citizens – and help protect our democratic systems into the future.

Get involved and your students could be the next big winners!

Click Here for a PDF Explainer of Informed Competition

Further Details

Submissions can be made by individuals, in groups or as a whole class.

The question students are answering and and target audience must be identified (year level) at the start of the submitted video.

One of the aims of this exercise is to assist students with information gathering and assessing the validity and accuracy of the information gathered. Therefore, research undertaken by or with students should be conducted from at least 3 contrasting sources – for example, one government website, one or two differing media outlets and one NGO, so that students can see any differences in the accuracy or quality of different resources, and learn to make judgements about potential bias and disinformation based on the source of information.

Media Permissions and Clearances

The videos that are submitted may be used on our YouTube channel, our website and our social media channels for promotional and educational purposes. Please ensure that your students have appropriate parental/ guardian permissions to appear in these spaces, or that students without these permissions do not feature in the final submission. Once submitted, please get in touch with us if you become aware of any changes to permissions over time.

Submission

We are currently working on the best way to submit your applications.

Instructions for students

Your teacher will teach you about a civics concept related to what you have learned in class. There are resources for you to use in this learning – an information or fact sheet and a PowerPoint are the starting points.
Complete the quizzes at the end of each PowerPoint to check for understanding of the concepts and ask any questions you have of your teacher.
Create a video that shows that concept in action or looks at the concept using a case study or scenario that you create. The video guidelines are:
- that it can only be a maximum of 60 seconds long (TikTok or Reels style)
- must be factually accurate, if not, we can’t post it on our YouTube channel!
- it should not just be re-teaching the content, but applying it to show you understand how it applies to your world
- You should use Australian examples
- it should be able to be publicly displayed on our YouTube channel or website – so make sure everyone has permission to be in it!
Once you have edited your video and have finished the task, submit your video by uploading it to at the link on the informed webpage at www.ruleoflaw.org.au/education/informed or here
The winning video will be the one with the most user engagement … so make sure you keep an eye out for it on our YouTube Channel – Rule of Law Legal Studies and get your friends and family to like and share it
We will let your teacher know if you have a winning entry at the end of January!