Chloe Healey's final year of high school started with her family being evacuated — twice —as raging bushfires surrounded her home in Orbost, in Victoria's far east.
"We've had fires here before, but I've never actually had to leave my home," she said.
"Its was pretty terrifying."
But the deadly inferno was just a precursor to what 2020 would throw at the Orbost Secondary College school captain's Year 12 class.
The fires that surrounded Orbost destroyed more than 400 homes in nearby towns and settlements.
Then, as the school year got underway, the college — four-and-a-half hours east of Melbourne — lost power and internet due to fire damage.
Just weeks later, the coronavirus pandemic hit, twice shutting down face-to-face learning for the class of 2020, and all Victorian school students.
But Chloe said, despite a "pretty wild" year, she and the other Year 12 students rose to the challenges they faced.
And yesterday, all the hard work paid off when she received her Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) score, along with other VCE students in Victoria.
Chloe said she was "over the moon" with her ATAR score and would now follow her dream to study occupational therapy in Melbourne.
Silver lining amid the hardship
While no Victorian student started 2020 expecting to spend the majority of the year being home-schooled, Chloe said she found a silver lining during the COVID-19 lockdown.
"Not having netball and that kind of thing, I wasn't able to socialise as much," she said.
"But not having those extra commitments outside of school [meant] I had a lot of extra time to study, so that was kind of good in a way."
She said her teachers had been helpful and supportive this year and "we kept in contact with them a lot".
Small school bursts with pride
Orbost high school principal Peter Seal said he was proud of the entire Year 12 cohort.
"They didn't complain about anything, didn't whinge at all, they just sort of got stuck in," he said.
Of the 31 students who graduated from Orbost Secondary College, 16 completed their ATAR. Two students scored above 90, and four, including Chloe, scored above 80.
Mr Seal said other students also did well, with nine successfully gaining apprenticeships, two picking up traineeships, and another training for a commercial pilot's licence.
"A good education is not just marked by their ATAR, our focus has been on what's the right pathway for those students," he said.
He said there had also been some positive changes to come out of 2020.
For example ATAR revision lectures, which were previously conducted face-to-face, and involved at least a six-hour round-trip for students to attend, were run online at flexible times during 2020.
"And that was really helpful for our students, and it was a better way to do it," Mr Seal said.
He said the school would look to collaborate with other nearby schools such as Swifts Creek, Cann River and Mallacoota during 2021, now that online learning was the norm.
