Exams return for class of ’22 who sat the GAT

What do clickbait headlines, e-scooters and Kraftwerk have in common?

All featured in the General Achievement Test, the first major exam this year for year 11 and 12 students, which ran for a marathon four hours, divided into two morning and afternoon sessions.

Box Hill High School year 12 students (from left) Prem Chanumalla, Brendan Hayes, Suha Shahzad and Felix Sun sat the GAT on Wednesday.Credit:Eddie Jim

Aspiring lawyer Suha Shahzad said she felt as prepared as she could be for the looming year 12 exam period, but Wednesday’s test was taxing.

“It was test conditions the entire time, so you’re pretty keyed up all the way through it,” she said.

“But we’ve done SACs [school-assessed coursework], practice exams, actual exams, so it’s not too bad.”

The year 12 student at Box Hill High School said she enjoyed the problem-solving questions and an article on how students can beat procrastination.

She and her classmates were among almost 90,000 senior students who sat the revamped GAT on Wednesday.

Writing an instruction guide for e-scooter riders was among the tasks, as were assessing the importance of German band Kraftwerk, and analysing clickbait headlines for effectiveness.

The GAT will be used to assess students’ literacy, numeracy and general knowledge, and the stakes have been raised this year.

Though the test does not count towards a student’s overall grades, literacy and numeracy scores will be recorded on graduating certificates for the first time, giving prospective employers a better sense of students’ capabilities in reading and mathematics.

Students undertaking the VCE alternative, the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning, and the unscored VCE were also required to sit the test for the first time.

Shayne Rule, principal of Lakeview Senior College in Melbourne’s western suburbs, said there was trepidation among his students about the revamped test.

Some VCAL students were nervous about sitting the test for the first time and weren’t used to sitting still for hours, Rule said, while others felt unprepared for exams after long periods of remote learning in 2020 and 2021.

“The structure of walking into the exam with hundreds of other kids and sitting in long rows is a little bit different and can be quite intimidating for some students,” he said.

Sample questions from this year’s General Achievement Test. Credit:Eddie Jim

Some specialist schools where year 11 and 12 students previously would not have sat any exams also participated for the first time.

Stacey Bushell, acting principal of the VCAL-only David Scott School in Frankston, said any standardised test could be overwhelming for students.

“The purpose of schools such as ours is to broaden the way we seek and recognise strengths, build confidence in our students and ensure that they are seen for what they can do rather than what they can’t,” Bushell said.

Melba College principal Aaron Sykes said students were nervous before the exam, but pleased they had had three relatively normal school terms this year to recalibrate after the pandemic lockdowns.

“There was nervous energy, as you’d expect and as you’d hope to see as a principal for kids walking into an exam,” he said.

“I think there’s a sense of relief that in some ways these assessments can be done back onsite and – it sounds funny to say – we’ve had the luxury of having an uninterrupted school year, beyond if they had COVID.”

The next major year 12 exam is English in late October.

The GAT is used to ensure school-based and external assessments have been marked accurately.

Performance on the GAT won’t affect a student’s Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, nor their VCE or VCAL results.

But those who meet or exceed minimum standards of literacy and numeracy will get a certificate of attainment. Those who fail to meet the standards on the day of the test won’t.

Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority chief executive Stephen Gniel said the test was important to ensure the VCE was fairly and accurately assessed.

“Now, with the introduction of the literacy and numeracy skills assessment, it will play an even more important role for more senior secondary students across VCE and VCAL,” he said.

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