Why Your Child Should Apply for Leadership Roles
The importance of leadership and value of giving things a go.
Author: Nelson Luo (Founder & Principal)
- Ex-North Sydney Boys (Rank 1st NSW)
- 98.20 ATAR (Australia's Top 2% )
- 100% UNSW Co-Op Scholarship Recipient
- Student Mentor of 100+ students
A parent told us recently that her son had been talking about trying out for the school debating team for weeks. He'd practised at home, asked his teacher about it, and came home one afternoon with the sign-up sheet in his hand.
She told him to go for it.
This is what we love to see for our students and parents. Because extracurricular and leadership roles can be extremely beneficial for the growth of students.
Across the students we work with at NL English Academy, preparing for OC, Selective and High School English, the students who consistently demonstrate the strongest academic growth are very often the same students who put their hand up for things.
They didn’t know if they’d succeed, but they went for it anyway because they knew whatever happened, it’d be a learning experience.
This piece is about what leadership roles actually build, why the skills transfer directly to academic performance, and why encouraging your child to apply, even when the outcome is uncertain, is one of the most valuable things you can do for their development right now.
What Leadership Roles Actually Build
The most immediate effect we notice in students who take on co-curricular roles is a shift in how they carry themselves in academic settings. There is a specific type of confidence that comes from having stood for something in front of others.
This differs from academic confidence, which tends to be domain-specific and conditional. A student who is confident in Maths but uncertain in English can still feel fundamentally unsure about their ability to figure things out under pressure. Leadership roles build something broader: a belief that they are capable of taking initiative, making a case, and being heard.
Students who serve on SRC learn to represent the views of others accurately and advocate for outcomes they care about. Representing a point of view accurately and then arguing for it effectively is precisely what is being tested in Selective persuasive writing. Students who have done it in a real-world context arrive at that exam with something a practice worksheet alone cannot give them.
Students who apply for school captain or prefect go through the process of putting their character into words. Writing a school captain application requires a student to reflect on what they actually value, what they have contributed, and what they want to contribute going forward. That process of self-articulation, practised before a high-pressure deadline, is a form of writing development that is entirely invisible in standard exam preparation.
And even the students who take on other roles, house captains, peer mentors, event committees, build something through the experience of being responsible for something beyond their own results.
However it is important to remember that leadership isn’t just cultivated through these roles, nor do these roles define who a leader is. A leader is someone with specific traits, like being a good public speaker or being someone who is empathetic. Having a leadership role provides an opportunity to build those skills, and also develop self confidence.
But learning to become a leader doesn’t have to be confined to a leadership role. Your child could take ownership of a group project in school, or be the one to invite and organise outings with friends. It’s about finding the opportunities, and taking initiative to capitalise on them.
Debating Does Something Classroom Work Alone Cannot
Of all the co-curricular activities a primary or secondary student can pursue, debating has the most direct and measurable impact on written English. The connection between spoken and written argument is deep, and debating activates it in a way that written practice alone rarely does.
When a student debates, they must identify the strongest argument available to them on a given position. They must structure that argument so it builds rather than rambles. They must anticipate the counterargument and address it before the opposition delivers it. And they must do all of this under time pressure, in real time, with someone actively pushing back.
That last part is where the real development happens. Written essays sit on a page and wait to be marked. A debate unfolds in real time, and a student who has been forced to hold their argument together under pressure, to find the words while someone is looking at them, brings a fundamentally different command of structure to their written work.
Students who debate regularly arrive at persuasive writing tasks with a clearer instinct for what makes an argument land. They know that a strong opening claim carries more weight than a hedged one. They understand that evidence should follow a claim immediately, not three sentences later. They know that addressing the opposing view directly makes an argument stronger.
These are the habits that markers reward in Selective writing. And they are genuinely difficult to develop through worksheets alone, because worksheets do not push back.
If your child has any interest in debating, or even mild curiosity about it, that is enough. The students who get the most out of it are not always the ones who walk in confidently. They are the ones who stayed long enough to find their footing.
Public Speaking and the Skill of Understanding the Impact of Words
I remember when my school had compulsory speeches that all students had to do. I remember how scared I was of speaking in front of all my peers and teachers, thinking that everyone was judging.
But the sheer act of speaking in front of a crowd over and over again was essential to building self confidence and getting over the stage fright. Despite being nervous each time, I knew that the more I did it, the more comfortable I would be in that situation, and the more comfortable I'd be thinking under pressure.
Public speaking develops a specific awareness that is rare in students who haven't done it: the understanding that words affect an audience differently depending on how they are delivered.
Most students, when they write, think about their own relationship to the words. They think about whether the argument makes sense to them, whether the sentences feel right in their own head. What they don't naturally consider is what it feels like to be on the receiving end.
Public speaking changes this. A student who has stood at a lectern and watched an audience's attention drift, then brought it back by changing pace or landing a more concrete image, has learned something about communication that reading about rhetoric will not teach them.
They learn that specificity holds attention and vague language loses it. A strong concrete image in the second paragraph of a speech does what three abstract sentences cannot. A moment of silence before a key point lands differently from a point buried in the middle of a long sentence.
These instincts transfer directly to writing. Students who have experience in public speaking tend to write with more variety, more awareness of rhythm, and more precision in word choice, because they have felt, in an immediate way, what it means to hold someone's attention. Encouraging your child to enter public speaking competitions, even small ones at school level, is one of the most effective ways to develop the writer's awareness that formal instruction rarely produces on its own.
The Application Process Itself is the Development
For school captain, prefect, and SRC roles, much of the value comes before any outcome is announced.
The application requires a student to reflect on who they are. Most Year 6 and Year 7 students have never been asked to put that into words in a formal context. Selecting experiences to highlight, choosing the language to describe their own character, and deciding what they would actually contribute, is a form of self-awareness development that most students find genuinely challenging.
What it produces is a student who has had to think clearly and write persuasively about something they care about deeply. That combination of emotional investment and the need for precision produces some of the most honest and well-structured writing students do at that age.
The process also introduces students to stakes that differ from exam pressure. An exam is anonymous. A school captain application has your name on it, and people who know you will read it. Writing under that condition requires a different kind of courage and self-perception that will help build confidence.
For parents, the most useful contribution during this process is not to write the application for your child, but to ask the questions that help them find what they want to say. "What do you want people to remember about this year?" tends to produce far richer, more honest writing than "what are your achievements?" and gives your child a better starting point than any template. Shifting the frame like this helps your child build motivation from within, as opposed to tying their worth to their achievements. It is much more fulfilling to think about the impact you will leave on others.
On Rejection, and What it Actually Teaches
If your child applies and is not selected, the instinct is to focus on the disappointment. It is real and worth acknowledging.
But it is worth holding in mind what actually happened. A student who applied put their hand up. They articulated something about themselves. They made a decision to try for something despite uncertainty. Those things happened regardless of the outcome and are not cancelled by the outcome.
Students who experience rejection and recover from it have practised something that many high-achieving students are genuinely underprepared for: working hard toward something and not getting the result they wanted.
That experience, processed well and with support, produces a student who is more resilient in future high-pressure situations. It reduces the catastrophising that often accompanies a difficult exam result, because the student has already learned, in a lower-stakes context, that not getting a result does not end anything. It is often the student who has never experienced setback who tends to be most derailed when one eventually arrives.
A long time ago, I failed the OC test badly. I had friends who also didn’t get into OC, and it made them feel like they weren’t good enough. But one thing I knew deep down, even as a year 4 student, was that avoiding failures would yield no growth. Accepting failure and learning from those losses was the only way forward. And that paradoxically made it impossible for me to ‘fail’ because I’d always have lessons to gain from those defeats.
So I took this failure and worked hard, using it as fuel and motivation to eventually ace the Selective Test and receive a direct offer into the NSW’s top school: North Sydney Boys High School.
My advice: encourage your child to try. If they don't get in, sit with them together and support them. Then encourage them to try again.
A Note for Parents who are on The Fence
Every school has co-curricular opportunities. SRC nominations, debating tryouts, public speaking competitions, school captain and prefect applications, peer mentorship roles. Most are more accessible than students and parents assume.
When your child brings home that sign-up sheet, or mentions they've been thinking about putting their name forward for something, the most useful response is not a risk assessment of whether they'll succeed. In my opinion, it is to ask them what they'd like to say about themselves in the application.
The students who go for these things, year after year, build a skill genuinely difficult to replicate through academic preparation alone. They develop the confidence to stand for something in front of others. They build the argument-construction habits that transfer directly to Selective and High School English tasks. They learn how words land on a live audience. And they articulate who they are under pressure, long before that skill is tested by an exam.
They also become students who find academic challenge familiar rather than threatening, because they have already practised handling uncertainty, pressure, and the possibility of not getting what they worked for.
If your child is sitting on the fence, or if you are the one holding them back out of care, encourage them toward the door. The skills they build on the other side will outlast any single exam result.
All the best!
Nelson Luo
Founder & Principal, NL English Academy
If you found this blog valuable, share it with a parent in your network who is preparing their child for their exams. Most families only discover these strategies once it is too late. You can be the reason someone gets a head start.
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