From the Principal
The Year 12 quandary
Perhaps it is common for educators to reflect on their own schooling. Perhaps there are things they will emulate from their experiences, or perhaps they swear never to repeat the mistakes they endured. Whatever the case, as I witness our Year 12 students working their way through their exam period I've become a little reflective. You see, I never sat any exams and yet I was awarded my Year 12.
At the close of Year 11, we were to consider our options for Year 12. There was the HSC, externally assessed through exams, and then there was STC, internally assessed without exams, the School Tertiary Certificate.
I was not a model student. I had very little confidence in my academic capacity, feared exams and I harboured no aspirations for tertiary study; not because I couldn't see myself at Uni, but I had no idea what I would study. Added to this, I wanted to stay at Preshil, my second home since Kindergarten.
STC gave me the option I needed to stay at school, complete Year 12, albeit without the holy grail of an ATAR, and have valuable time to consider my future. The STC model was loosely based on the Dalton Plan, a progressive school system that operates on a kind of self-paced academic contract agreed between student and mentor. So it was with STC; we put proposals to our teachers, committed to complete these within agreed timeframes, and met regularly with our 'tracker' to ensure we were on target. When the VCE took over as the State offered Year 12, the STC was disbanded. What a loss.
When Preshil moved away from the VCE, we were hopeful that we would be able to offer the Diploma Programme and also the Career-Related Programme (CP), which allows students to complete their final years of school, albeit without an ATAR, and design a course with a tertiary goal in mind. The CP is common internationally, but here in Victoria, in 2016, it was rejected as an alternative to the VCE, VET, VCAL and IBDP. And the story might have ended there, but then there was Preshil!
Preshil is a perfect case study for why this programme should be authorised; we only offer the DP, have a student body who would likely be strong candidates for this programme, and a staff who would dearly love to see our Years 11 & 12 programme expanded to offer more choice and greater flexibility to our students.
My own experience has made me passionate about the prospect of offering the CP. Together with a small number of independent schools across the State, and with the support of Independent Schools Victoria, we are banding together to try again to have this programme authorised for offering to students in Victoria.
This process will take time, and is not guaranteed to be successful, but it is a fight worth our energies, and one which I will be proud to hand on to Josh.
Cressida Batterham-Wilson
Interim Principal