Victoria's international students inspire us all

It feels like much of the conversation about international education over the last twelve months has been around the challenges we face as an industry.

I'd like instead to talk about the students - these amazing students who inspire us all every day, with their resilience, their tenacity and their persistence, in the face of great adversity.

These students who bring the world into our classrooms, who reflect our own education system back to us through their eyes and their experiences, who challenge us to be better, to do better, and who help us to engage in a meaningful way with the diversity of the many countries and cultures that they represent.

So today, as we begin our Lunar New Year celebrations, and with the first term of the school year now underway, let's celebrate these students while acknowledging the significant challenges that lie ahead for us all.

As with local students, the final year of school was a very unusual one for our international students. In addition to the move to mandatory remote learning and anxiety around COVID-19, international students faced the additional challenges of living away from their families, and concerns about the health and safety of their friends overseas. Despite the impacts on their studies and personal lives, so many of these students demonstrated amazing resilience and adaptability with many achieving remarkable ATAR results.

Many students also experienced isolation, loneliness and difficulties with language and comprehending social cues while learning online. Nevertheless, they rapidly adjusted to new modes of learning with the support of their schools, principals, teachers and homestay families, all of whom went over and above to support their learning and well being.

I am very proud to present to you some of our 2020 student success stories: https://www.study.vic.gov.au/en/study-in-victoria/success-stories/Pages/default.aspx

These include some wonderful interviews with the following students and their host schools:

·      Chuting (Tina) Tang, from Balwyn High School, who received an ATAR of 99.95

·      Sara Youssef, an Egyptian student from Frankston High School who hopes to continue her studies in medicine or nursing

·      Thuy Nicharee (Pingping) Scrichan, who got an ATAR of over 90 while studying at Rowville Secondary College and has already secured a Monash Scholars Program offer at Monash University

We are extremely proud of the perseverance, hard work, and extraordinary accomplishments of these international students, and so many others who study across hundreds of Victorian government schools.

I’d also like to give a huge thank you to our host school principals, and to all of their teachers, International Student Coordinators and homestay providers who care for these young students like their own. It's an honour and a privilege to work with you all.

We have another big year ahead of us, but it's stories like these that make it all worth it.

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