Former St Brigid’s College student Jenny van Veldhuisen received the award for her score in English and Ballarat’s St Patrick’s College student Oscar McDonald, from afor further mathematics.

Both students achieved perfect Victorian Certificate of Education scores of 50 in their respective subjects last year.

Miss van Veldhuisen said she was notified of her award by mail.

“It was a nice little surprise to receive,” she said.

She said after completing VCE, a lot of students moved forward and forgot about how it went. 

“It was a nice recognition for all my hard work,” she said.

“English was my favourite subject by far, because I like writing. 

“But it was also the hardest subject because it is so subjective – unlike maths or science when an answer is either right or wrong.”

Miss van Veldhuisen also won a Premier’s VCE Award for legal studies last year.

She said she was glad to have finished school and was now studying at Melbourne University.

“VCE is not easy and it’s a lot of hard work,” she said.

Oscar is in year 12 at St Patrick’s College and studied year 12 further mathematics while he was in year 11. 

He said the award was worth all the hard work he put in throughout the year.

“It was really good to win and pretty surprising,” he said.

“I sacrificed my social life to study last year and worked really hard.”

He said maths was his favourite subject and was looking at studying maths at university next year. 

He said he aimed for more high scores in the rest of his subject.

“I’m doing biology, physics and English – English is my downfall but hopefully I can still do well,” he said.

St Patrick’s College headmaster Peter Casey said the college was delighted that Oscar’s academic excellence had been honoured at the highest level. 

“I offer my heartfelt congratulations to Oscar for achieving such brilliant results,” he said 

“He worked tremendously hard throughout the year to perform to his full ability and this accolade is just reward for all the effort he contributed.”