No Victorian student studying Greek received a 50 or 49 as part of their VCE results this year, which is a significant drop from previous years.
Demi Tsironis, of Protypo Greek Bilingual Education, was the highest scorer receiving a 48 for her high school studies in Greek.
Maria Foscolos, Greek teacher and coordinator of distance education for Victorian School of Languages (VSL) told Neos Kosmos most years Greek has had a student scoring a 50 or 49.
“We have to compare it to the other 46 languages that are taught as well as the past results, this year we didn’t have a student who received 50 or a 49. 48 was the highest.”
Foscolos said the results for other community languages, such as Arabic, Croatian and Serbian, also received less than 50 saying they are “in a worse scenario than Greek”.
“That’s due to a formula that the education department put together whereby if a lot of students do very well there is a bell curve and they have to be standardised so all the results drop.”
St John’s Greek Orthodox College, Oakleigh Greek Orthodox College and Alphington Grammar all had very few top scorers, between 40 and 50, which is worth noting as unlike other schools, that offer Greek after hours or on Saturdays, they cover the language program in five periods a week.
Four students from VSL got top scorers including Maria Leonardos, who studied Greek – using the distance education program – from Zambia, Africa, a program Foscolas says we need to protect.
“The future of Greek says we have to try and have more enrolments as generally there are about 270 enrolments in total across Victoria,” says Foscolos.
The two top scoring students of Classic Greek were Adrian Chueng, Balwyn High School , who recieved a 43, and Xavier College student Simon Farley who received a 41.
All top scoring students were presented with awards by the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria on Wednesday night.
However, Greek Orthodox Colleges in Victoria celebrated another successful year with the high scoring VCE results of their year 12 students.
86 per cent of Alphington Grammar students were in the top half of the state with their VCE results. 53 per cent of the students received tertiary entrance scores above 70 which placed them in the top 30 per cent of the state.
Modern Greek and International Studies were among the best performing subjects with Ioanna Yiannourakou Lianidou receiving the top score in the school of 44 out of 50, and securing her place in the top five per cent of Victoria.
Meanwhile, St John’s Greek Orthodox Grammar saw 85 per cent of their students securing a place in their first choice degree for tertiary education. 16 per cent of the students receives a tertiary entrance score above 80; 46 per cent of the students received a tertiary entry score of over 70; and eight per cent of the students were ranked in the top ten Victorian university entrants. Greek was ranked as one of the highest scoring subjects at the school.