A commitment to education and training

Student Handbook and Course Selection Web Page

The Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School provides a training program, supported by a high quality general education to prepare talented young people for professional careers in music and dance.

This is achieved by ensuring that a well balanced core academic program is integrated with specialist studies. VCASS aims to produce well educated, thinking dancers and musicians who will also be highly trained and therefore have a great deal to contribute in their chosen field.

Students at VCASS spend approximately half of the day in their academic studies and approximately half of the day in their specialist area being taught by musicians and dancers. This means that all students entering the college have to be highly motivated in order to manage the heavy workload.

Curriculum

As well as music and dance, the VCA Secondary School offers a full course of study from each of the Curriculum Standards Frameworks areas to years 7 to 10 students using the Victorian Essential Learning Framework. This includes English, Mathematics, Science, Humanities, The Arts, Languages, Health Education and Information Technology. Musicians do some physical activity and are offered several electives.

In Year 10, Year 11 and Year 12 students undertake the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) in music and dance and also have the choice of a range of other VCE subjects to complete a full VCE, thus providing them with as broad a range of tertiary course options as possible. VCE results in both the specialist and academic areas at the VCA Secondary School are remarkable and show that our students are consistently able to achieve outstanding results. Our students study VCE Vocational Education and Training (VET) units in Years 11 and 12 for dancers and Years 10 and 11 for musicians.

Tuition fees

Tuition at the VCA Secondary School includes all teaching and training. There are no tuition fees for Australian students. All students are asked to pay a contribution towards school materials and supplies, internet use and printing.

Entry is competitive and is equivalent to winning a major scholarship.