Students at Anglicare Victoria’s Bendigo Educational Services Unit are no strangers to fighting for the school they love.

Lauren Trull, who graduated from the school last year, remembers stepping in for a favourite teacher whose job was under threat a couple of years ago.

“We came up with this crazy idea to go busking and we made like $5 and we went back to my teacher and said: ‘Is this going to be enough to help you stay?’,” she said.

“The people upstairs were so moved by what the kids would do to keep the teacher there they let him stay.”

Now the students are hoping the powers that be at Anglicare Victoria will be similarly moved by their efforts to save the school itself.

Current year 10 student Riley Hunter has started a petition to keep the school open after Anglicare announced its decision to close the ESU last week.

It has so far attracted 400 signatures – up to ten times the number of students who attend the school in any given year.

Like other current and former students who spoke to the Bendigo Advertiser, Riley said attending the ESU had turned his life around, and is worried about the prospect of returning to mainstream schooling.

“I’m much happier around home and I enjoy coming to school, whereas when I was at a mainstream school I didn’t enjoy going,” he said.

“All I know from what we’ve heard is that the school’s going to close at the end of the year and we’re hopefully going to save it.”