The VCE is designed to be gamed. With ATAR results out, did we get what we needed?

There exists a handy quote, useful for any student seeking to justify inattentiveness at school. It was perhaps uttered first by Mark Twain, or by his contemporary Grant Allen, though this year it has certainly been uttered most by me. A year of VCE has meant I know well the line: “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

I have been wondering just how accurate the saying is. Under the VCE system, is there a difference between our schooling and our education? Are our final secondary years in Victoria merely about rote learning and passing tests?

The VCE has become more about a high score than education for its own sake.Credit: Wolter Peeters

From the get-go, the VCE seems to encourage strategy and cynicism over intellectual curiosity. This is clear in subject selection. How many kids chose Latin, with its generous mark-up of about 16 scaling points, because of their passion for declensions and grammar? In the same strategic vein, how many students picked maths methods, a prerequisite for degrees such as commerce, because of their love of calculus? Of those commerce hopefuls who chose the subject out of necessity, how many worked only towards the 25 needed for a pass?

My older sister warned me against selecting classical studies for VCE in year 11. Apparently, due to the subject’s size, cohort, examination style and scaling, it wasn’t a tactical pick. This might have been true; there are subjects that are safer, subjects that historically yield better results. Yet, among these considerations there seemed little consideration of the fact that I might actually enjoy studying classics. Talk of mark-ups superseded any thought that I might love Homer. Concern for study design style trumped mention of my interest in Greek history.

Alongside this, the structure of assessments means that true education – which allows the exploration of ideas when they arise, the discussion of concepts when they are discovered – is difficult. For schools that run on-site SACs (school-assessed coursework which contributes to final study scores), the tightly packed schedule encourages a brand of learning that is framed entirely around upcoming assessments.

At many schools throughout the state, impending SACs dominate students’ outlooks. This means that questions are posed not out of curiosity but compulsion. There is no more common inquiry than “Will this be on the SAC?” If the topic in question is not to be assessed, then you can guarantee students will not bother with it. And who can blame them?

Of course, it is easy to be critical of a system such as the VCE. The idealised education that I am writing about is probably resistant to any sort of systematic implementation. I get that many students are taking the VCE as a step towards their desired vocation rather than as an intellectual foray. The ability to ask, “Will this be on the SAC?” can make year 12 more manageable.

Yet there remain pressing problems. There are “content subjects” such as business management, where students must learn and formulaically repeat content. Even subjects such as English often involve students memorising paragraphs and introductions and simply regurgitating them on the page. Memorisation and rote learning are required for the vast majority of VCE students. All this recalls E. M. Forster’s warning: “spoon-feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon”.

While I am unable to offer an alternative to the VCE system, I can point to a subject where its strengths are on show. In philosophy, the end-of-year exam is split into three sections. In both the second and third section, after responding to prompts with the reasoning of certain philosophers, the paper asks the exam candidate to evaluate and present the most compelling response. It is this feature – something that demands independent, original, logical thought – that fits the bill of education rather than schooling.

If only this emphasis on active reasoning rather than passive recitation could be applied to more subjects, I think the VCE would truly test our next generation.

Daniel Cash is a VCE student and captain of school at Melbourne Grammar School.

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