Year 12 student Gail Hall returns to school at Northern Adelaide Senior College aged 64

Heading back to class at this age might seem daunting but this woman has a point to prove.

Gail Hall s finishing year 12 with fellow students, Max Stewart 16, Georgia Hartfield 18 and Hunter-Rose Jones 19. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Year 12 student Gail Hall often gets mistaken for a being teacher.

That’s because it’s been more than four decades from when the 64-year-old started school in England to when she will finish studies in Adelaide this year.

The Northern Adelaide Senior College student is determined to graduate with her year 12 certificate.

“In my head, I’m only 30,” Ms Hall said.

For her, returning to school was “all about self worth and the feel-good factor”.

“It was a point to prove that if I can do it, somebody else can do it,” she said.

Gail Hall left school at 16 in the 1970s. Now, at 64, she is finishing year 12. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Ms Hall had wanted to be a veterinarian since she was young but, in 1977, when she left school aged 16, “if you weren’t going to university, the thinking was you went out to work”.

“It was the normal thing to do, and, at 16, I already had a job lined up,” she said.

“I always wanted to be a vet, but I didn’t want to do the five years at uni.”

Instead, Ms Hall decided to join the family’s horseracing business.

“I’d been riding ponies since I was 18 months old,” she said.

But Ms Hall didn’t stay long in the industry, doing many other jobs – including being a supervisor in a bakery as well as a travel agent – before moving to Adelaide in 2005.

“I’ve lost track of all the jobs I’ve had, to be quite honest,” she said.

“When I got here, I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”

When she came to South Australia, she initially worked in the tourism sector, including on the famous Ghan railway line between Adelaide and Darwin.

But for Ms Hall, “the feeling and urge of livestock always runs through your veins”.

“I wanted out of the office environment and wanted to go back to my roots,” she said of her desire to work with animals again.

However, when searching for jobs, Ms Hall found companies wouldn’t accept anyone without any “official qualifications”.

“If the only way I can go back to my roots and prove to somebody that, yes, I can do the job, and then the only way I saw … was to get that qualification,” she said.

Ms Hall has always wanted to be a veterinarian. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Ms Hall had also never been one for “sitting in front of the gogglebox wasting my life”.

“You’ve got to keep the grey cells ticking over,” she said.

“I’ve always been motivated, and I can’t sit still.”

This led her to Northern Adelaide Senior College, at Elizabeth, three years ago.

She studies there five days a week while working a casual job as an event staff member.

“It was quite daunting at first knowing I was an older student, but it was very welcoming here and I fitted right in,” Ms Hall said.

“The students are quite open. They do think I’m a teacher, at times.”

It took some acclimatising to the new look of classrooms, as when she was last at school “the teachers wrote on chalk boards”.

“How things have changed – it’s all on a laptop now instead of pen and paper,” Ms Hall said.

This semester, she is studying business innovation and maths but jokes she’s not a fan of the latter.

“I had no interest in maths the first time (she was at school),” Ms Hall said.

Business innovation is her favourite subject.

Ms Hall makes cards and crafts as a side hustle which she started following a government-backed skills program, Enterprise ME, which helps budding entreprenuers.

While Ms Hall believes she “could be a bit long in the tooth” for work as a vet, she hasn’t given up hope.

Originally published as Year 12 student Gail Hall returns to school at Northern Adelaide Senior College aged 64