David Baker

Principal

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For decades, high-stakes exams have dominated the VCE, with the outcome being that students’ final judgments are handled by a testing program that rewards memorisation and stress tolerance over deep learning and skill mastery. It’s a 1980s relic of a system, one that fails to measure what matters today. In a world reshaped by automation and AI, today’s employers prize creativity, collaboration and adaptability – skills that cannot be captured in a three-hour test.

Expected changes to Australian jobs over the next decade will demand technical fluency and human strengths,such as resilience,critical thinking and ethical judgment. Handing control to AI isn’tthe answer;intentional useis.Clearly, the future of work is not about competing with machines; it’s about partnering with them.

So, what should our response as educators be? The OECD’s Learning Compass 2030 offers a clue when it suggests that we need to cultivate “transformative competencies”.In practice, that means we need to build young people’s ability to create new value, reconcile dilemmas and take responsibility. These competencies aren’t for rote learning; they emerge through inquiry, through projects that tackle real-world problems, through feedback that charts growth over time. At Woodleigh, students already learn this way: designing solutions with community partners, presenting findings with confidence and, importantly, discovering who they are in the process.

Research shows that well-designed project-based learning, with clear success criteria and robust feedback, improves achievement and higher-order thinking. It is demanding – but differently demanding. Alignment with initiatives like the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Metrics program is also in the works. Melbourne Metrics seeks toassessthese more complex capabilities, such as collaboration and ethical reasoning, the things you cannot express in a three-hour exam. It offers a broader perspective, and arguably a better passport to tertiary study and employment, by replacing the tyranny of the reductive, single score.

At the heart of this argument, as expressed by 2025 Woodleigh Year 12 student, Char Palmer, is this. “Education has the capacity to provide so much more than work skills. It has the capacity to shape us as humans, to give us confidence, respect and empathy. We have been so, so fortunate that Woodleigh knows this.” Char’s words remind us that education is not just a pipeline to jobs and efficiency; it is a breeding ground for character and community. It teaches us to care for each other, live gently on the earth and build futures worth having. That is the gift of schooling – and the challenge for policy.

Education is not just a pipeline to jobs and efficiency; it is a breeding ground for character and community.
— David Baker, Woodleigh School Principal

As ‘The Education State’, Victoria needs to meet the market, work with tertiary and business, and move the needle beyond exams and ATARs, starting by measuring what matters – assessing complex capabilities as well as content. Senior years assessment must evolve from snapshot exams towards cumulative evidence of learning. Education must help us discover who we are and the communities we serve. The system that honours both will not only restore trust – it will equip graduates to thrive in a world where ingenuity, empathy and agency matter more than ever. That is a purpose worth defending.