A 12-year-old Tamworth girl has written to the city's school principals, asking for their support as she takes action on climate change.
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Lucy Lyden, who is in year 6 at Tamworth Public School, will be marching in the local School Strike for Climate Action on September 20.
She'll be holding weekly meetings in the lead-up to the event and is asking the principals to let their students know about them.
However, a Department of Education spokesperson has quashed that proposal.
"Young people are free to form and express opinions on contemporary issues," they said.
"Attendance at the evening event would be up to young people and their parents.
"As public schools carefully manage students' exposure to controversial issues at school, principals would not advertise this event to students."
Lucy said in her letter: "I am very concerned about the impact that climate change is having, and will increasingly have, on our region and the planet.
"My generation are going to be the most affected by global warming.
"I feel the need to be doing whatever I can to reduce carbon emissions so we can have a brighter future."
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Lucy's father Mark and mother Bernadette "absolutely support her", Mr Lyden said.
"We think that climate change is an existential problem for everybody, and something that we all need to be involved in learning more about and making clear to our government that it needs to do something about the matter," he said.
He had been skeptical about whether principals would promote the action.
"I believe there is some resistance to be seen to be encouraging children to be out of school ... but I think if students are going to be out of school for an hour doing something as important as this, it's perfectly understandable, and if I was an educationalist I'd be turning a blind eye."
Lucy wrote that young people felt "helpless and reliant on governments of the world taking action".
"I want to change that and make them feel that they are part of the solution to the problem.
"To do that I want to bring together students who are concerned about climate change to meet regularly to discuss what we can be doing to help reduce carbon emissions."
- Lucy's meetings will be held in the Lyden Law offices, at suite 1, level 1, 315 Peel Street, Tamworth
- They will be on Thursdays at 6pm from August 22 until September 19