Speakers

Courtney Pemble is a 16-year-old youth advocate, speaker, three-time National Boxing Champion and founder of the Fix the System, Not the Student campaign.

After experiencing poor mental health, unmet needs and Emotionally Based School Avoidance (EBSA), Courtney left school in Year 10. A year later, she received an autism diagnosis, which helped her better understand many of the challenges she had faced throughout her education.

Motivated by her own experiences, Courtney began sharing her story publicly to raise awareness of the barriers faced by young people, particularly those who are neurodivergent or struggling with their mental health. What started as sharing her own experience quickly grew into a national conversation.

In just over a month, almost 2,500 young people from across the UK have engaged with her campaign, sharing their experiences of education, mental health, neurodiversity, EBSA, attendance challenges and feeling misunderstood within the system.

Her work focuses on ensuring that young people’s voices are heard within conversations about education and school attendance. Through campaigning, public speaking and media appearances, she advocates for greater understanding, earlier support and more inclusive approaches to helping young people thrive.

Her mission is simple: to ensure that behind every attendance figure, behaviour record and outcome, we remember there is a young person with a story worth understanding.