The robust discussion, held in the school's MPC, was open to all staff, support staff, invited students and parents.

Students Takesa Frank, Adrian Le and Helena Kastelein joined community members Leonie Marsh, Tina Broad, Rob Richards, Darren Harvey, teacher Karyn Ingold and South Coast Principal Network director Stephen Heslop on the panel.

Questions focused on teaching children how to discriminate fake news, how a classroom looks in the future and utilising the local community's skills and influence.

Mr Le, a year 7 student, called for more critical thinking, more digital elements in the classroom and team activities.

"A lot more digital, a lot more group activities," he said.

"We have a lot of individual projects we work on."

Ms Broad said the "broken down model" of learning did not reflect the modern workplace, where people collaborate in teams to much-tighter deadlines than a 10-week term block.

She also hoped schools could utilise professionals, retirees and other community members as mentors.

Mr Richards, who is an Ulladulla accountant, spoke of the changes in his workplace where it utilises cloud-based systems, apps, and online messaging services to get answers to "high-end" questions in real time.

"We're reliant on internet, live-type services," Mr Richards said.

Mr Heslop said he would like children delve deeper into their projects to improve their critical and creative thinking skills while collaborating with the real-world.

Principal Denise Lofts said the panel's members will feature on podcasts to be published later this term. The Influence Panel was one of five sessions for the school's staff development day.