The number of students taking this year’s VCE Greek exam is up from last year. This year, 268 students will sit the exam, an increase of 12 students from last year, according to provisional numbers provided by the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment authority.
And while the oral part of the examination has been completed, the Victorian students are currently preparing for the written examination on Monday 18 November. In past years, students studying Greek have fared quite well, and Greek is one subject in VCE where the students perform exceedingly well, with the average mark being 75-76 per cent. And most Victorian students are sitting on an A and B+ as their final year 12 results for Greek.
John Milides, Principal of the Greek Afternoon Schools of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria, and Vice President Modern Greek Teachers’ Association of Victoria, attributes this to their, and their parents’, ongoing commitment to learn Greek.
“Greek is such a unique subject because students start from grade prep to year 12 and they dedicate four hours of their week attending Greek school on top of their studies,” Mr Milides tells Neos Kosmos.
“And we know most of the kids do it in Greek afternoon schools, community schools; there aren’t many subjects that parents dedicate their time to every week for their children for 13 years as they do with Greek, and that’s the reason why the children are doing so well.”
He says the number of students studying Greek – 270 – is representative of their desire and interest in the subject. However, he said even when the number of students reached the thousands in previous years, the results were always high.
And, he says judging by the attendance to Greek subject seminars – organised by the Greek teachers association – the community can rest assured that interest in the Greek language is high.
“This year we had 250 students attend [seminar to prepare them for their VCE Greek exam] compared to last year were only 110 students attended, so there’s a strong feeling that the subject of Greek in year 12 is worth studying and is rewarding culturally and academically with marks.”
The trend shows that Greek students are performing well in the exam, and due to this, examiners made last year’s exam harder to see a spread of results, but the results still showed high performance by all 256 students.
“Although the exam has gotten harder over the years, the performance of the students is still really good,” says Mr Milides.
“The results show that about 80 per cent of the students are performing in the A and B+ range and that doesn’t happen in many subjects in the VCE.”
Questions about culture, geography of Greece, history of Greece and questions about Greeks living in Australia – their habits and customs – are the subjects covered in the Greek exam.
“The students perform very well in the oral section listening and responding, according to the examiners report,” says Mr Milides.
“They also do well in reading and responding but have some trouble in the essay writing so that’s where they need to pay most of their attention to.”
Mr Milides says all Greek teachers read the examiners report that is created after all the results have been analysed. By reading this, they can clearly see where the students are suffering and are having difficulties and focus on that in their studies the following years.
“Every VCE teacher should be guided to read the examiners report, as they point out where the students went well, what they found hard, and their writing and spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes.”