By Noel Towell
High school students are shunning the “hell” of ATAR-scored final exams and flocking to the vocational VCE in their thousands, with the alternative stream experiencing a surge in enrolments of almost 20 per cent last year.
The growth of the Vocational Major VCE (VM) looks set to continue, with more than 26,600 students now combining job-ready vocational training with their high school studies.
Coburg High student Florence Nichols, and her rabbit Quincy, studying for her vocational major VCE.Credit: Wayne Taylor
But the state government is facing calls to do more to promote the option to year 11 and 12 students seeking an alternative to the stress of pursuing an ATAR score and university place.
The VM was introduced in 2023 to replace the Victorian Certificate of Higher Learning (VCAL) which had developed a serious image problem, and was often described as the “poor cousin” to an ATAR-scored VCE.
The government worried that the stigma attached to the VCAL discouraged schools from offering the stream, leaving too many students with no choice but an unscored VCE.
But nearly all government schools are mandated to offer the VM, a move intended in part to address the patchy availability that dogged the VCAL.
The state government says the growing numbers of Year 12 completions of vocational majors – from 6454 in 2023 to 8290 students last year – has helped boost overall year 12 completion rates, which were at just 91.7 per cent in 2021, to 97.5 per cent in 2024.
Students in the state’s growing regional towns and cities are flocking to the VM in greater numbers than their rural or metro peers, with VM enrolments surging 28 per cent between 2023 and 2024.
It’s an option that is working for Coburg teenager Florence Nichols, who began her VM at Coburg High this year, studying mainstream subjects for most of the week but travelling each Wednesday to Melbourne Polytechnic in Epping to work toward her certificate II in animal care.
Nichols plans to finish year 12 with a certificate III, as well as her VCE, and from there it will be off to TAFE to study veterinary nursing in pursuit of her dream job as an animal carer in a wildlife sanctuary.
The 16-year-old said the VM had allowed her to stay at school, with her friends, completing subjects she liked but without the pressure and stress associated with the ATAR.
“I really like how I can do VCE English and VCE maths because I’ve always really enjoyed English and my teacher said that I could do well in general VCE maths,” Nichols said.
“So I’m really liking the flexibility of it, it takes a lot of pressure off VCE, definitely.”
Northern suburbs mother Susie Latham is school council president of the Northern College of the Arts and Technology in Preston, in Melbourne’s north, which has emerged as a major hub for vocational studies, and says encouraging her two sons into VM might have been her best parenting decision.
Latham said many families saw no choice for their children but to endure “two years of hell” in pursuit of an ATAR.
“Some of my son’s friends were like, ‘I’ve got to give up tennis, I can’t do this, I can’t do that’,” she said.
“Then some of them just can’t cope, and they just say they’re not going to do the exams, but they’re sort of stuck in the thing anyway, and to me, an unscored VCE is just such a wasted opportunity.”
Latham is an enthusiastic VM proponent, after her elder son completed year 12 with his VCE, three certificate IIIs and two work experience placements behind him, all of which earned a first-round uni offer for his preferred course, and then a full-time job in his chosen field by the end of his first semester.
But Latham, a university academic, says the VM still has one big problem.
“They forgot to tell the parents,” she said, adding that families should be informed about the option via email or mail.
“We found out [about the VM] by accident and it shouldn’t be an accident … there are so many benefits.”
Brent Houghton, principal of Coburg High, said more and more students were finding their own way to VM, and having the vocational option at the school, which did not offer the VCAL, was having an impact on retention.
“It’s definitely helping keep more of our students to finish year 12,” he said.
“We find that the hands-on offerings and the ability to combine both traditional VC subjects as well as the vocation of subjects, is a really good mix for many students.
“For some students, previously the only way for them to finish their VCE was to be unscored, this is now a viable pathway.”
Education Minister Ben Carroll said the VM was a historic reform and that Victoria was the only state to have grown vocational education and training (VET) enrolment in schools for the past four consecutive years.
“The VCE vocational major is the biggest reform to senior secondary schooling in a generation – ensuring that no matter what you want to be when you leave school, Victoria has a pathway for you to achieve it,” the minister said.
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