Following the release of our impressive VCE results, our Heads of Faculty, together with Director of Teaching and Learning, Mrs Ceri Lloyd and Deputy Principal, Mr Rob Marshall, spent time distilling the academic achievements of the Class of 2021. Given the challenges endured with COVID lockdowns across the past two years, their VCE success has led to St Catherine’s ranked as the number one girls school in Victoria and third best performing school in the State.

It was our conclusion, that no single reason led to these extraordinary results, instead a combination of factors summarised by two simple words: Academic Care.

Two years ago, St Catherine’s teachers commenced a rigorous professional learning journey in partnership with the University of Queensland to implement a ‘Teaching for Thinking’ agenda which, ultimately, has raised the bar of our teacher mastery and pedagogical expertise. The ‘Thinking Classroom’ intersects VCE syllabus content with student thinking and tailored feedback, to ensure girls ‘use’ their knowledge, not just ‘rote’ learn. This unique classroom practice, together with our trusted student-teacher-parent partnerships, and smaller class sizes, created a consistently supportive routine across the school day.

The advancement in technical skills, for both students and staff, also ensured fluidity to exist between Learn@Home and ‘on-campus’ learning last year. The end result was a school year complete with enormously proud teaching staff and a graduating class who are keen to pursue their passions, interests and tertiary studies of choice.

During our Senior School Assembly our 2022 School Co-Captains, Angela Yu and Madeline (Maddie) Powell interviewed members of the 2021 Cohort, to share their insights regarding how to achieve a successful and fulfilling VCE year.

Last year’s School Co-Captain, Clementine (Cece) Newton-Brown (’21), successfully achieved a Perfect Study Score for Accounting, and was offered a Bachelor of Commerce at The University of Melbourne, after successfully achieving an ATAR that placed her in the top 1% of the State.

Cece encouraged younger students in the audience to achieve a balance between their co-curricular and academic pursuits. A talented academic student who engaged wholeheartedly in the Rowing program in Term 1, Cece chose to then re-direct her time to study at the completion of the Rowing season. Cece shared with the audience her time management secrets across Year 12. She maximised time before school and until early evening, grew to understand her own limitations of work and rest, and maintained a high level of consistency by studying every day across the year. Cece described this as her ‘chip away at it’ approach.

Allegra Dennison, who also successfully gained a place to study Commerce at the University of Melbourne, also provided her VCE insights during the Assembly. During her time in the Senior School, Allegra captured the joy of participating in co-curricular programs, whilst remaining focused on her studies. Allegra always played GSV Sport, and loved rehearsing and performing in every School production. Allegra is also well-remembered for igniting a passion for Debating and Public Speaking amongst the students in our Senior School. As a student of St Catherine’s School since Year 1, Allegra indicated she adopted a strict study schedule and maximised every spare lesson available at School. She also studied in silence and made a point of removing all distractions, such as her mobile phone or listening to music. Allegra described this time as being ‘switched on’ for study. She also wisely reminded the audience to ‘focus on their own progress, not that of others’.

Zara Carter was our third panellist and shared with our Assembly audience her passion for the folio subjects, such as Media and Visual Art. Zara is commencing Film Studies at Swinburne University and hopes to study in London in the coming years. Zara successfully achieved an ATAR in the top 10% of the state. During her VCE years, Zara seized every opportunity to find her passion through design. She encouraged students with similar interests to do something they enjoy, lean into their creative skills and to create concepts and designs that they are proud of and then, the work comes easily.

Our VCE teachers will again create opportunities to invite the (now) Old Girls back to their specific subjects across the year, to share more intimately their study techniques pertinent to each subject.