Why are some schools discouraging students from doing the VCE?
In most instances, students decide what path they will follow during their final years of school.
They might choose the VCE or its successful vocational alternative, the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning.
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VCE students pushed out
Concerns that schools are pushing non-academic students out of VCE to boost their rankings.
This decision is made with guidance from a careers counsellor and a student's parents.
Unfortunately some schools are not listening to students and pushing those with poor grades into VCAL or the unscored VCE.
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Insiders say this is being done to boost a school's results.
A school's median VCE study score and percentage of study scores 40 or above improves when low-performing students are removed from the VCE cohort.
What is the unscored VCE?
At first glance it looks appealing; no exams and an early end to high school.
The unscored VCE is becoming more popular. Students undertook 1076 unscored VCE subjects in 2015. Last year, 3.5 per cent of VCE graduates or 1747 students achieved no study scores, foregoing an ATAR.
Student who do the unscored VCE are marked satisfactory or non-satisfactory on their VCE school-based coursework. Many schools promote the unscored VCE as a "stress-free" alternative to the scored VCE.
Students must receive at least four study scores, including one from an English subject, in order to receive an ATAR.
This means they could do one subject unscored, and still receive an ATAR. But if they do the bulk of their subjects unscored they will not qualify for an ATAR.
What is the impact on students?
Most students who want to go to university after school will need an ATAR.
Students who are pushed into the unscored VCE or VCAL against their wishes will not receive this rank, making it more difficult to get into university after Year 12.
The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority states in its VCE handbook that students should be encouraged to graded assessments and their absence "may limit a student's options for further training, study and work".
One psychologist and former teacher, Kevin Quin, said that being pushed out of the VCE had a profound psychological effect.
Students might feel rejected or inadequate.
Why do schools care so much about their VCE results?
There is fierce competition between schools in all sectors.
VCE results day has been described as a feeding frenzy, where high performing schools compete for air time to announce their results.
Schools are desperate to promote their VCE results to attract aspirational families with the brightest students.
As well as protecting their academic reputation, these families can bring extra money to a school through fees and by attracting government funding.
What do students say?
Many young people told Fairfax Media that their schools had put their academic reputation ahead of their student's best interests.
One student who is deaf, and did not want to be named, said her teachers told her to do the unscored VCE because it would mean less work for them.
She refused, saying she wanted an ATAR so she could go to university. But the discussions dragged on for months.
"I refused to do the unscored VCE. They just didn't stop until my parents got involved."
The young woman, who is now at university, said her school incorrectly believed that she wouldn't perform as well as other students in exams.
"Disabled students often work hard very hard and yet they still get discouraged by their teachers who claim the exams and university will be too 'difficult' for them to even try to complete," she said.