Top effort: Aaron Fleischer was Echuca College's dux for 2022, with an ATAR of 98.65.
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The Echuca College community is celebrating its resilient Class of 2022 after VCE results were announced on Monday.
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Aaron Fleischer was dux with an ATAR of 98.65, placing him in the top two per cent of students.
“I’m not too sure of my plans at the moment, but I’m heading to Monash University to do engineering next year,” Aaron said.
“I’ll do a first year and then decide from there which specialisation I’d like to do.”
Aaron said he was surprised he received such a high score.
“My goal was always to get in the 90s, but I didn’t think I’d get that high, to be honest,” he said.
“I always thought that the high 90s was for the elite of the elite, and for all the private schools in Melbourne that are always really good.”
Like his classmates, Aaron has not completed a full year of learning at school since Year 9 due to COVID-19 and flooding disruptions.
“Over COVID trying to learn everything was tricky, and then this year wasn’t too bad, but over the last few weeks with the floods it was painful trying to find time to study,” he said.
“I was just lucky that over the past few years I’ve had my older brother, who is at uni, able to help me with questions that I had.”
Aaron’s advice to future Year 12s was simple: try your best.
“You never know what you can get if you try, and you might be surprised like I was with how high you can actually get and not even realise it,” he said.
“At the start of the year, for me, it felt like it was going pretty slowly, but by the time you get into the swing of things it goes by really quick, so make sure you enjoy the year.”
Principal Jessica Sargeant congratulated the students on their results and commended their hard work.
“It has been a very disruptive year for these students,” she said.
“We had four high achievers, and a number of students in the 70s range.
“All the kids that did exams had good results in terms of their scores.”
Ms Sargeant explained that some students chose not to complete their exams this year, and instead received a derived score from their assessments and their GAT.
"The derived score helped them because they’d lost their house, or were evacuated and living with 15 other people at a time. It was pretty difficult,” she said.
“We’re happy as a school with how the kids have gone.
“We’re proud of their resilience, and even to stay at school and finish after these last few years is amazing.”
High achievers: Echuca College principal Jessica Sargeant, assistant principals Andrew Briggs and Catherine Kervin, and high-scoring students Freddy McLoughlan, Aaron Fleischer and Raya Gallimore.
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