The Honourable Julian Leeser MP, Federal Shadow Minister for Education & Indigenous Australians, in conversation with Nikki Bonus, Life Skills GO
National Check-In Week 2026 is more than an awareness campaign. It is a national movement for early identification, early intervention and system reform — turning listening into action.
In this National Check-In Week 2026 session, Nikki Bonus sits down with Julian Leeser MP —
Federal Shadow Minister for Education and Indigenous Australians — to talk about what is actually happening for young Australians right now, and what genuine change requires.
The conversation is grounded in the evidence. Life Skills GO’s 15 Million Student Wellbeing Check-
Ins Report — drawing on more than 15 million individual student check-in responses across
Government, Independent and Catholic schools nationally — shows that 1 in 4 students at any
given time are struggling to engage socially, emotionally and behaviourally. These are not abstract
statistics. They are students in Australian classrooms, right now, whose path from belonging to
engagement to attendance to attainment has quietly broken down.
Julian brings his own story — the loss of his father to suicide, and 30 years of conviction that
noticing the signs, and having the systems to act on them, is not optional. Nikki brings the evidence:
from listening to action, built hand-in-hand with more than 1,000 Australian schools over nine years.
This is what National Check-In Week 2026 is for. Not awareness alone — but a national
commitment to early identification, early intervention and system reform.
Key Themes:
- Belonging comes before attainment
When a student doesn’t feel safe, seen or connected, the path to engagement, attendance and
learning breaks down. Life Skills GO exists to surface that breakdown early enough to change it. - From lagging indicators to real-time insight
Australia has relied on attendance, behaviour and academic results to see students. These measure
what has already happened. Life Skills GO automates student voice and wellbeing data to show what
is unfolding now — automatically surfacing the right information to the right person at the right time,
without adding to workload. - The equity gap that won’t close
On Indigenous communities, masking, and why equipping every teacher — not just wellbeing
specialists — to identify and respond to early signals is essential to closing the gap. - From programs to evidence
Schools reach for programs. But without baseline wellbeing data, there is no way to know if those
programs are working. National Check-In Week 2026 is a call for consistent, national, evidence-first
measurement.
