By Callum Ludwig
VCE students across the state nervously awaited their results on Monday 12 December, and the students at Upper Yarra Secondary College (UYSC) were no different.
The results were dropped at 7am, with students potentially finding out they had done enough to make it into their dream course while others will need to interview or apply for a university to continue their studies.
Head of Senior School at UYSC Kate Feagan said the class of 2022 were a lovely cohort.
“You always see cohorts coming through and they’ve got core groups of students among each other but I didn’t notice that much in this group. They all sat together and socialised together, which is a fantastic thing given the last couple of years leading up to 2022,” she said.
“Considering the limited ability to have those relationships with each other, it was great. These guys are a testament to consistent effort across the year and what that gets you and achieving ATARs of 80 and beyond is really impressive. Sometimes I don’t know if they understand the gravity of what they’ve achieved but being in the top 20 per cent of the entire state is pretty amazing.”
Maeryn, Ruby, Emily and Amy were four of UYSC’s top achievers for 2022.
Maeryn said she is going to take a gap year now that she has finished school.
“I do have a job at the school for Term One, as someone is going on leave and they needed someone to fill in. Ms Finn said I should do it and so I will be helping out as a lab tech,” she said.
“The year kinda sucked, and I think I would’ve been happier if I did different subjects but I’m happy with how well I did.”
49,581 students graduated with their VCE Victoria-wide this year, a completion rate of 98 per cent. 15,163 students graduated with their VCAL.
Ruby said the year was pretty stressful but she was glad they got to go through the year out of lockdown.
“We were studying in a classroom again, which made it a lot easier, which I know would have been a lot harder if we were locked down. My score didn’t get me into my first preference, but I didn’t really want to do that in the end anyway,” she said.
“I am going to go to uni, that’s the plan so far but it is still a bit uncertain. That and I will be working part-time and hopefully travelling later.”
There will be several changes to VCE and VCAL starting in 2023. The state government has allocated $277.5 million to reform the system, with VCAL being replaced by a VCE Vocational Major and Victorian Pathways Certificate, aiming to provide students with more opportunities for apprenticeships, traineeships, further education and training, non-ATAR university pathways or pathways into the workforce after leaving school.
The reforms were introduced after a review published in November 2020 found that more needed to be done to make vocation and applied learning schools “high quality, highly regarded, relevant to the needs of students and employers and available to all.”
Emily said she thinks she will get into her first preference, but she would also be happy with her backups.
“The school and the community within the school helped so much with the struggles we had as well,” she said.
“The year was a mix of being really challenging at times, like when he had lots of SACs in one day, but also probably the most fun year of school with my friends and everything happening.”
Amy managed to achieve a study score of 44 for Outdoor and Educational Studies, meaning she appeared on the honour rolls released to the media.
Amy said she really enjoyed the year and didn’t find it as stressful as everyone talks it up to be, having more free time than she was expecting and doing the subjects like Outdoor Ed that she loved.
“My plans are to do a diploma of Sport and Coaching at the Carlton College of Sport and I don’t yet know what job I want, but I hope to eventually end up working in the sport industry,” she said.
“The teachers here [at UYSC] were so supportive and we definitely wouldn’t have gotten the scores that we did without the support that we got from almost all of our teachers.”
