By Alex Crowe
Madeline Arkinstall, 19, was never going to let a chronic illness or studying online stop her being a student leader.
“In a group, when someone needs to be the organiser, I’ve always been that someone,” she said.
Arkinstall, the inaugural year 12 captain at Haileybury’s online school, Pangea, faced more challenges than most in getting to VCE exams.
Madeline Arkinstall has completed year 12 through Haileybury’s online school while managing her symptoms.Credit: Justin McManus
In 2022, six weeks into year 11, Arkinstall began to experience such extreme exhaustion that just getting off the couch was a challenge.
She said she could manage attending class at her mainstream school only about one day a week.
Within weeks, doctors had diagnosed her with chronic fatigue syndrome. But having a diagnosis didn’t make attending school any easier.
“It affects your concentration, it affects your memory, it affects your ability to think coherently,” she said.
“When your brain is in that really bad brain-fog phase, it makes doing any sort of schoolwork virtually impossible.”
Opened in 2023, Haileybury Pangea is the state’s first private online school and takes students from year five to year 12.
Its $20,035 annual tuition fee for all-year levels is almost half the $39,985 charged for year 12 at Haileybury’s Berwick, Brighton, City and Keysborough campuses.
As year 12 captain, Arkinstall ran weekly catch-ups in the virtual common room with her classmates to help strengthen the online community.
She said their year 12 formal – halfway through the year – was the first time most of the students had met in person.
“It was proof that what we were doing was working,” Arkinstall said.
“Just seeing us all together and really connect, when a lot of us hadn’t really caught up in person beforehand, was really special.”
Haileybury’s establishment of Pangea has coincided with a surge in enrolments in home-schooling and online learning.
Figures from the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority show there were 11,240 Victorian students being home-schooled in June 2024 – a 51 per cent increase from 2019. Meanwhile, enrolments at Virtual School Victoria have grown about 45 per cent in the same period.
For Arkinstall, who is sitting her exams at Haileybury’s city campus, online learning was a lifeline.
She said that without it, she did not think she would have been able to finish year 12 with an ATAR.
“I realised that actually it was the only way I could complete year 12,” she said. “It just felt like there was this weight lifted off.”
More than 45,000 Victorian students are sitting the year 12 VCE exams, which conclude on November 20.
When ATAR results are delivered on December 12, Arkinstall is aiming for a score that will allow her to study commerce at university. She hopes her leadership skills will eventually help her start a successful business.
For now, she is managing the stress alongside her symptoms.
“I’m taking it day by day,” she said. “It’s not something you can magically cure.”
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