Schoolies to learn VCE results on Monday

Bendigo schoolies have brushed off the sand to don their uniforms one last time, to mark their high school graduations. See the new faces.

Girton Grammar School has announced its captains for next year and farewelled its class of 2022, in a musically-charged evening at Ulumbarra Theatre.

Aksharan Shobanan and Ava Griffin will lead the school cohort in 2023, taking the reins from departing captains Rena Nichol and William Hamilton.

The new leaders said they hoped to help their peers become more involved in school life next year, following years of COVID-19 shutdowns.

“Student involvement is very important to us,” Ms Griffin said.

She leads the Girton Singers choir and the chamber choir.

Mr Shobanan is involved in music and sport, including soccer, cricket and badminton.

The school’s year 12 students performed a tribute to Olivia Newton-John in a farewell performance to end the Year 10 – 12 speech night event.

Monday will mark another rite of passage for Bendigo’s year 12s, with VCE results due to be released online at 7am.

Students from the East Loddon P-12 College at Dingee will be back at school on Monday for a final interview, ATARs in hand, capping off their secondary school education.

The East Loddon P-12 College class of 2022 celebrated its graduation dinner straight after the exams finished.

The school, which is set among farming properties in a township of 206 people, blitzed the VCE results last year.

Its 2021 class battled through remote learning and intermittent lockdowns across two years, to pull out the highest individual score in the school’s history of 99.3 and record breaking results for average ATARs.

Its average ATAR was 82 and the cohort included five students with ATARs in the 90s – the highest ever seen at the college.

Assistant principal Scott Wilkinson said the students had been flooded out in lead up to their exams this year, but held together as a tight knit group.

The school held its graduation event at the Woolshed as soon as the exams were over. Its graduating class of just 11 students took a joint schoolies beach trip together to Ocean Grove.

“A lot of family farms were flooded,” Mr Wilkinson said.

“They missed the last week of official classes because they had to be cancelled and the school was closed. Our buses couldn’t run for two weeks.”

Mr Wilkinson said the school had faced hardships before and come out on top and he was optimistic of their chances of performing well again this year.

“We start with them in year nine and work through with them over those years to keep them on track with what they want to do at the end of school,” he said.

“Most of them will come back to school on Monday for an interview about their next steps, particularly with university or further education.”