A sense of guilt was the major factor in St Augustine’s College VCE student Tom Bruhn’s choice not to apply for special consideration for his Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR score).
“We had the opportunity to apply for special consideration.It was offered to us, but because I live in Kyabram I didn’t apply,” Tom said.
“I felt like we weren’t directly affected by the floods. I suppose I felt a sense of guilt in applying for the special consideration.”
There were students in the Class of 2022 that did take up the offer to apply for special consideration, given the extremely late change to plans.
St Augustine’s 39-strong (30 VCE and nine VCAL) Year 12 student body was due to sit mock exams on three of the days that the college was closed because of a lack of staff.
Tom said he did not know anyone from Rochester, but had spoken to friends in Shepparton affected by the flood event.
“They are still sitting exams, but they have the derived scores to fall back on,” he said.
“If the exam scores are worse than expected they will receive a derived score.”
At St Augustine’s only half of the VCE teachers were able to get to school during the flood-affected learning week.
“We were supposed to have our muck-up day on the Friday, but because of the floods we called it off. On that day almost all the teachers couldn’t get to school,” Tom said.
“Then we had mock exams planned at the college for the first three days of the week.”
All 30 students sat the English exam at St Andrew’s Church hall last Wednesday.
Tom said he felt as though some more were affected than others in regard to the lead-up to the exams.
“For me it is hard to study the subjects I don’t enjoy as much, so I was relying on the mock exams,’’ he said.
Tom had the multiple-choice component of his further maths exam on Friday, then the short answer on Monday. Following on from that he has his favourite subject, health and human development, then physical education and food studies.
He said he had completed outdoor education in the lead-up to his VCE year.
Tom said he knew a couple of students who were tackling the big five — English, physics, chemistry, specialist maths and maths methods.
“That is a very challenging assignment,” he said.
St Augustine’s College VCE students will now say goodbye to their secondary school education at a November 15 assembly event and then the graduation is at Radcliffes in Echuca on November 17.
Tom said several students had been pretty stressed during the week at home.
“It affected those people, like me, who need structure,” he said.
“The mock exams would have forced us to study, but we are into it now.”