Key points

• A record 5373 students completed their VCE unscored last year. 
• Students who go unscored do not get an ATAR, the standard way into university.
• Principals say some students are rejecting exams to protect their mental health.

The number of students completing secondary school with an unscored VCE is soaring, with more than one in 10 graduating without an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank last year.

New figures reveal that a record 5373 students, 10.6 per cent of the 2021 cohort, completed their VCE last year without sitting exams and gaining an ATAR, which is the typical way to enter university.

Dale Pearce, principal of Bendigo Senior Secondary College, says weariness from the pandemic is leading more students to complete their VCE unscored.

The number is a big jump on the 8.3 per cent of students who completed an unscored VCE in 2020, during the first year of the pandemic.

Principals said there was a growing trend for Victorian students rejecting the rigours and stress of exams because they were prioritising their mental health or pursuing post-school pathways, such as TAFE or employment, that do not require an ATAR.

Dale Pearce, principal of Bendigo Senior Secondary College, one of the state’s largest specialist senior secondary schools, said weariness from the pandemic was leading more students to complete their VCE unscored.

“They don’t want to put themselves through the stress, or they lack the confidence given the interruptions to their learning in the last couple of years,” he said.

He said there was also a “contagion effect” at play, as some students saw their peers choosing to do unscored VCE.

“They ask themselves, why am I putting myself through this?”

Pearce said if a student decides to go unscored, the school speaks with the student and their parents.

“We want kids to have the full VCE experience and we want kids to try their best and achieve their best,” he said.

“Where I get concerned is when we have students capable of doing quite well but [they] make a decision to go unscored for the wrong reasons.”

Many schools do not allow a student to complete their VCE unscored without parental approval. Those who do are still required to complete coursework for their subjects.

An Education Department spokesperson said completing the VCE without study scores was a valid alternative for some senior secondary students, such as those who do not need an ATAR for tertiary admission, or who are going to attend TAFE or enter the workforce.

“The rates of students undertaking unscored VCE have been rising over the past five years as students are offered more pathways that don’t require an ATAR – whether that’s university pre-offers, more courses added to free TAFE or other initiatives to make further education available to more Victorian students,” the spokesperson said.

“Other students may choose not to undertake assessment when their circumstances make it difficult to complete a scored VCE program, such as illness, mental health concerns or disability.”

The ATAR is a ranking, between zero and 99.95, of a student’s results in relation to other students, and is the standard entry route into university.

Jeff Mulcahy, principal of Hume Central Secondary College, said the school did not encourage students to go down the unscored path unless it was viewed as the best way to help them graduate. He said some schools pushed year 11 students who were struggling academically towards an unscored VCE, to protect the school’s overall study scores.

“We don’t do that,” he said. “It’s more if we see that a student is not coping with the rigours of [school assessed coursework] – sometimes there is a lot of anxiety – so we use it to keep them in school, hopefully complete year 12 and move into a successful post-school pathway.”

Tim Blunt, principal of Sunshine College, said many students at the school steered away from university because they viewed the fees as unaffordable. The college pays the tertiary application fee for any student who applies for university and counsels students “not to cut off their options”, but Blunt said the trend of completing VCE unscored was growing at his school.

“And I think that’s across Victoria, where kids don’t want to go through the hoops to get into tertiary education,” he said.

“They’re happy to get the VCE certificate as just the end point of their education and then go into work, or many have found it’s relatively easy to get into TAFE courses.”

The most recent Victorian tertiary admissions data reveals that enrolments into Victorian universities declined last year by 2.85 per cent.

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