Tessa Randello
Year 11 and 12 students had their masks on and heads down for the GAT on Wednesday.
The General Achievement Test is usually held earlier in the year and for 2020 graduates will be a contributing factor to the ‘consideration of educational disadvantage’ for their VCE scores.
Kurnai College campus principal Geoff Block said the consideration gave more clout to the outcome of the GAT for students.
“In this particular case its really important that all students do the GAT and do it as well as they can,” he said.
“Because, the score together with teacher judgements of what grades students would have received without COVID-19… what grades they expect and other factors will be put together.
“Students will get a derived score from all of those things, that is why this year in the GAT is a bit of a different process.”
Mr Block said it is harder to prepare students for a test like the GAT.
“It’s a very different type of assessment, this year we have tried to give students a bit of a heads up as to what to expect from the GAT because frankly it can be quite left field … some students find it very difficult,” he said.
“We have no idea what will be in the GAT but we have tried to give them some strategies about how to approach those questions and the type of question they will be getting. It has all been happening while remote learning, it’s an attempt to do this in the best way we can given the circumstances that we have which are not ideal.”
Kurnai College school captain Chloe Mifsud said she was glad the test was over.
“This year there has been more pressure on the results of the GAT because you feel like you have to do well and it feels like we are also at a bit of a disadvantage, because you haven’t been at school and you haven’t had that face to face contact,” she said.
“I had some technological issues with remote learning, so I did not really like it, the teacher’s faces would freeze all of the time.
“I would prefer to be at school, but we are making it work.”
