A Victorian student has achieved a perfect score in the VCE without ever attending high school.
The Age reports on Stephen Zhang, who has been home-schooled since grade five.
He is one of 35 Victorian students who achieved a top ATAR of 99.95 on Monday.
The Age reports that Stephen’s mum taught him at home until year 10, after which he did Distance Education.
“I was not expecting it. It’s a miracle,” Stephen, 17, said of his score.
The Age says he studied eight hours a day at a desk in an empty bedroom, while distance education teachers provided him with online support.
“I wouldn’t have been able to achieve results like this without their help,” he said.
Stephen’s parents are Chinese-born immigrants who moved around a lot when he was a boy, looking for work.
He says his parents took him out of school because ‘they really wanted to have a stronger voice in my life, and they really wanted to instill moral values, character, integrity – which they considered more important than academic performance. They valued that more because it would set me up in life.’
