Pearce said that if a student decides not to score, the school talks to the student and their parents.
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“We want kids to have the full VCE experience and we want kids to do their best and get the best,” he said.
“What worries me is when we have students who are able to do pretty well though [they] make the decision not to score for the wrong reasons. “
Many schools do not allow a student to complete their VCE without a score without parental approval. Those who do have yet to complete the assignments for their subjects.
A spokesman for the Department of Education said completing the VCE without study scores was a valid alternative for some upper secondary students, such as those who do not need an ATAR for tertiary admission, or who are going to attend. to TAFE or enter the world of work.
“The rates of students doing VCE without a score have been increasing over the last five years, as students are offered more itineraries that do not require an ATAR, whether they are pre-college offers, more courses added to free TAFE or other initiatives to continue training. available for more Victorian students, “the spokesman said.
“Other students may choose not to take an assessment when their circumstances make it difficult to complete a graded VCE program, such as an illness, mental health problem, or disability.”
The ATAR is a classification, between zero and 99.95, of a student’s results in relation to other students, and is the standard route of access to the university.
Jeff Mulcahy, principal of Hume Central Secondary College, said the school did not encourage students to follow the path without scoring unless it was considered the best way to help them graduate. He said some schools pushed 11-year-old students who were academically struggling towards an unscored VCE, to protect the overall scores of the school’s studies.
“We don’t do that,” he said. “It is more if we see that a student does not support the rigors of [school assessed coursework] Sometimes there’s a lot of anxiety, so we use it to keep them in school, hopefully complete course 12 and follow a successful after-school path. ”
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Tim Blunt, principal of Sunshine College, said many students at the school dropped out of college because they felt the rates were not affordable. The college pays the tertiary application fee for any student applying to college and advises students “not to cut their options,” but Blunt said the trend to complete unscored VCE was growing in its school.
“And I think it’s through Victoria, where kids don’t want to go through hoops to access tertiary education,” he said.
“They are happy to get the VCE certificate as the end point of their education and then start working, or many have found it relatively easy to access TAFE courses.”