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Education | July 22, 2021

Kealy calls for special consideration for Year 12 students

The Nationals Member for Lowan Emma Kealy is calling for all 2021 Victorian year 12 students to receive special consideration because of the disruption caused by COVID-19 and remote learning.

Ms Kealy has received calls from students and teachers over recent weeks who are feeling increasing levels of anxiety about whether they will have time to get through their remaining course content and assessments, and the potential impact this will have on their learning outcomes.

This anxiety has escalated with the latest Victoria-wide lockdown, prompting Ms Kealy to call on the Victorian Government to move exam dates to a later date, reduce the unit 4 content, and reintroduce the Consideration of Educational Disadvantage as was done in 2020.

“The current year 12 cohort missed almost 15 weeks of face-to-face instruction last year when they were in year 11 and have experienced a lockdown in every single term since the end of December 2019, including three days in February this year, a week at the end of May and the current lockdown that started on July 16 with no end date in sight,” Ms Kealy said.

“The first VCE exam of 2021 – the General Achievement Test – was postponed from June because of Victoria’s fourth lockdown, and is currently scheduled for July 29.

“The Liberal Nationals are actively pushing Labor for this to be further delayed giving students more time to prepare, however no decision has been made and at the moment our advice is that it will proceed on July 29, much to the concern and disappointment of many teachers, parents and students.

“This is having an enormous impact on students’ mental health, and I am calling on Labor to introduce similar measures that the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority afforded students last year.

“Year 12 is always an extremely challenging time for students and the extra stress that COVID continues to add means both students and teachers need our support.

“The Andrews Labor Government needs to act now to ensure our local VCE students are not disadvantaged even further than they already have been by Labor’s repeated Victoria-wide lockdowns, even though regional Victoria has remained largely free of active COVID cases.”