By Parker McKenzie
Year 12 students around the Dandenong Ranges celebrated the milestone of receiving their ATAR scores, as they prepare for life beyond secondary school.
Students received their VCE results from 7am on Monday 12 December and while some received early offers, others will need to interview or apply for a university to continue their studies.
Mater Cristi College student Madi Zapanta, who was Dux of the school, said her score of 98.4 wouldn’t automatically get her into her dream course.
“I’m looking to do medicine and to get into undergrad med I needed to get a really good ATAR score,” she said.
“I got a good score, but it wasn’t competitive enough so I’m waiting for interview offers at the moment.”
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.
Ms Zapanta, who was also a sports captain at her school, said she has known she wanted to study medicine from Year 9.
“I found it hard to balance study and if I wanted to keep doing my sports, so I stopped playing footy for a while but then ended up coming back to it and it was really good for me,” she said.
“The plan is to go do a few interviews for university spots and then if not, I’ll start a Bachelor’s degree at Monash and try to do well in that and try to transfer out.”
Jasmine Andrews, who was offered a Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship from Deakin University after the results were published, said she will miss the sense of community at Mater Christi College.
“I’m hoping to study the wildlife and conservation biology course,” she said.
“I used to just be very focused on trying to get those really high marks and putting a lot of stress on it, but I think I eventually realized that it’s more important to just learn and to get the most you can out of it.”
Minister for Education Natalie Hutchins said in a statement that she would like to congratulate every student who received their results.
“This is an exciting step as they move from secondary education into further study, training, the workforce or a gap year,” she said.
“These results show our education system is delivering high-quality outcomes, setting students up for future success in whatever pathway they choose.
“I want to acknowledge and thank the hardworking teachers, principals and parents right across the state who have supported students to achieve these fantastic results.”
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.”
