Ravenshoe students Jed Baker and Preston Fox elected as sports captains

Jed Baker was elected Ravenshoe State School Archer sports captain and suffers from a condition called Moyamoya, a disease caused by blocked arteries at the base of the brain which can cause multiple strokes.

Fellow peer Preston Fox is also a student with diverse learning needs and was elected Archer vice sports captain for the 2021 school year.

Ravenshoe mother of three and Jed's mum Nicola Baker, said his peers were "the best group of kids in the world".

"The fact that they had Jed being included the same as any other child or young adult at school was pretty emotional for me," Ms Baker said.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I even consider the idea; I was approached by the school about whether Jed would be interested in nominating for the role of sports captain and I said 'well look if we don't ask him, we'll never know', so I asked him what he wanted to do and he was super excited to participate.

"In fact I had to then talk him down from that he wasn't necessarily automatically going to get anything, so we had to lower his expectations a little bit, but with a little bit of time we put together a video, and he put the words together that he needed about how much he likes sport and that he wanted to nominate for sports captain.

"Jed loves participating in sporting activities and he's always at athletics, he competed in the cross country, which is the open section with 16-year-old boys and over and ran six kilometres and finished the race.

"For someone with significant health issues that's quite astounding that he can do that but when he does it, he's always running with a smile on his face."

Jed suffered a stroke in 2004 at just 11 months of age and went on to be diagnosed with Moyamoya.

"Jed has a stenosis of the arteries, meaning they are narrow and the brain says 'there's a problem here, there's no blood where it needs to be' so it sends out little capillaries around where the narrowing is and on an MRI those capillaries can look like a puff of smoke," Ms Baker said.

Ms Baker said when she learnt that Jed could nominate her reaction was very teary and was a show of faith, compassion and inclusion from the school.

"The whole week was very emotional for me because you don't realise how difficult it can be being the mother of a child with special needs," Ms Baker said.

Ms Baker is the founder of Moyamoya Australia, a website dedicated to raising awareness of the disease, and said given the right support, kids with disabilities can make valuable contributions to their communities.

"It's not just being in a leadership role but teaching other people what it's like to have inclusion; just because they're slightly different to the rest of us doesn't mean they're any less valuable," Ms Baker said.

Ravenshoe State School P-12 principal Helen Carne said the two boys had been fully embraced by the whole secondary campus.

"Jed was encouraged to apply for the sports captaincy role and Jed and Preston had to go through the same process as all the other students," Ms Carne said.

"The only thing is Jed presented his speech as a video and I think there wasn't a dry-eyed person in the house when we got up and he played his video because it was footage of different carnivals.

"The students and the staff had a vote and Jed was successful as sports captain and Preston was successful for a vice captain, so two boys with diverse learning needs have been fully embraced by the whole secondary campus."

This is Ms Carne's first year as principal at both the primary and secondary campuses and she has worked hard to have all students included and treated as equals.

"I don't even use the term special education, we try to use the term 'students with diverse learning needs' and all of us have different learning needs," Ms Carne said.

"It's changing at a rapid pace, in terms of acceptance of everybody in society, and schools obviously have to be at the forefront of that.

"Educating our young people that we have to be accepting and that everybody's entitled to have a go."