Thirteen years of primary and secondary schooling comes to an end for my daughter this week as we wait for the final piece of the puzzle – her VCE results on Thursday.
As every parent who has had a child graduate from secondary school knows, the end of the education journey is bittersweet, a mix of relief that the grind of school is over (endless school lunches, clean uniforms, permission forms, parent teacher interviews, sports days, school productions, pick up and drop offs and homework) tinged with sadness at the passing of an era that started when they were five and ends when they are on the cusp of adulthood at 17 or 18.
I remember taking my daughter to school on her first day of prep in her stiff new dress and shiny little black shoes, her school bag so big it seemed like she would topple over backwards under its heft.
People say the school years disappear quickly but it is not until you look back that you release how true that is.
For some the education journey is smooth and linear. The child starts at one primary school, progresses to a secondary school and graduates surrounded by their friends, some of whom they have known since day one.
That was not the case with my daughter.
Her cohort is part of the Covid generation who spent a great deal of year seven and eight learning remotely during Victoria’s world-beating lockdowns. They started their secondary school journey full of hope and optimism, only to be yanked out of the physical classroom time and again and confined to home learning in bedrooms and at kitchen tables for months at time.
She hated remote learning, withdrawing bit by bit until she was barely logging onto the core subjects by mid-2021.
In year 9 she was bullied by a former primary school friend. In classic teenage girl form the bully’s tactics included exclusion, whispered insults in class ( though not loud enough for the teacher to hear) and abusive messages delivered via social media.
By March 2022 my daughter had had enough. As her parents we were faced with school refusal or moving her.
She didn’t want to try another large government school so, despite being committed atheists, we enrolled her in a Catholic college.
I was full of pride watching my shy daughter muster the bravery to walk into a school full of strangers, trusting herself even when everything around her was new.
More than three years later I had to suppress tears at her final year 12 assembly. I was so grateful that my child had found her tribe and blossomed into a confident, capable, kind and compassionate human. The joy and exuberance on display at the assembly was palpable, a scene replicated at schools around the country.
As a parent you just want your child to fit in, be accepted and thrive. My daughter found this and more at her new school.
At the college valedictory evening I expressed my gratitude to the principal. He was grateful for my feedback and acknowledged that the class of 2025 had a harder road than previous cohorts as they navigated their way to the end of year 12.
He indicated that their scores may not be as high as previous cohorts because of the disadvantages they experienced during the Covid years.
Whatever score my daughter achieves on Thursday ( she wants to study social work at RMIT after a gap year) I will be proud beyond words of her and her contemporaries.
They have overcome adversity thrust on them by a once in a hundred year pandemic. They picked themselves up, dusted off their laptops and got on with the business of learning, laughing and growing up.
Whether they completed VCE, VCAL or jumped early into jobs and apprenticeships, they are the future and I can’t wait to see what they do next to make their mark on the world as their journeys continue.
