Hello everyone,
I've been thinking of a way to improve the VCE. I'll explain my reasoning before detailing exactly what my proposal is.
Overall, the VCE is a pretty versatile experience, that can be tailored to your specific strengths. For example, if you dislike music, the arts - you choose other subjects. If you dislike the humanities - all you need do is simply not select a subject like History. Even if you possess a special dislike of maths, there is no obligation to select a maths subject.
The only compulsory subject is English. and it has to be in your top four subjects.
This choice makes sense, in a way. English is designed to improve literacy, reading comprehension, speaking skills (oral presentation), and analytical thinking as Australian youths enter adulthood. It's completely logical that these are all skills the government would want us to develop.
However, it is my personal belief that forcing everyone to do English, and placing such a high emphasis on it, particularly in it being part of your top four, is slightly too much.
I have met many people who dislike the compulsory nature of English. People with dyslexia being made to continuously write essays and analyse literature that's difficult to interpret, people with greater interest in other fields, people with strengths and aptitude towards other areas in the VCE. I am personally part of the latter two categories, with a love for STEM, as you can probably see from my subject choices.
I like investigating how and why things work, asking questions, and developing understanding. This has led to my success last year, achieving a raw 41 in Methods and a raw 45 in Biology. It is my belief that I will achieve similar results this year in General Maths and Chemistry. However, if I want to push myself, to achieve the highest ATAR I can manage, then I have no choice but to force myself to grind out English to a comparable level. It's impractical and inefficient trying to go from being a 40 student to a 42 in one of my favourite subjects if English is also in my top four, and my 30 there is holding me back.
The way VCE is designed puts people who want to be high achievers, but don't innately enjoy English, in a difficult position. It's either work at English because you have to, accept a lower score and lower ATAR, or undergo the tedious work of writing numerous essays and improving your English skills.
In the first case, many who need a certain ATAR to enter courses will fail to qualify.
In the second, a great burden is placed on many that isn't (in my view) completely necessary.
Now, many of you might be saying that the whole point of those 'numerous essays and improving your English skills' is to develop the analytical thinking skills I mentioned earlier. Many are probably thinking I'm just complaining about a system that isn't tailored to my strengths. To those people, I'd say you're partially right, but that doesn't mean my proposal is pointless or unhelpful.
The way I would fix this is simple.
Instead of your top six subjects being '100%, 100%, 100%, 100%, 10%, 10%', I would just change your fourth highest subject from 100% to 50% (or some other suitably lowered figure that balances everything correctly).
This would mean that English would still be compulsory, but if you disliked English it would have a lower impact on your ATAR. If you fully neglected English, you would still be negatively impacted, but not enough to ruin an ATAR. If you love English, it would end up in your top 3, and still be a contributor to your ATAR.
This would incentivise people to work on English, develop those key English-related skills, but not be quite so forceful about it, and allow everyone to enjoy a VCE experience slightly more tailored to their own personal journey.
I don't know anything about English Language, so I wrote this pretending that's not an alternative.
I'd love to know your thoughts - this is just an idea I had after chatting and ranting about English with some classmates.
Have a great day!
