Victorian year 12 students' VCE results and Atar to be adjusted for Covid impact

Every final year Victorian high school student will be individually assessed for adverse impacts of coronavirus, which will be reflected in their ranking for admission into university, as part of measures introduced by the state government to ensure the pandemic does not hinder their future education.

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) will introduce a wide-ranging “consideration of educational disadvantage” process to calculate each student’s Australian Tertiary Admission Ranking, which measures a student’s overall academic achievement compared with other final-year students in Australia. In a normal year, certain students are assessed for special consideration on a case-by-case basis but in 2020 every student in Victoria will undergo this assessment.

“This is quite an extraordinary change,” the state’s education minister, James Merlino, said on Friday. “We’ll look at things such as school closures, we’ll look at things such as long absences. We’ll look at things, for example, such as significant increase in family responsibilities as a result of Covid-19 and we’ll, of course, consider the mental health and wellbeing of students during this period.”

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