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This year’s senior high school students are the guinea pigs of B.C.’s new Grade 11 and 12 curriculum, and many appear to be excited about the new style of learning that focuses on student-driven projects.

But some are also anxious about whether these innovative changes could make them less prepared for university and college, and even complicate post-secondary admissions because of a move away from formal testing.

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“We are the transition year, because no one has answers for us,” said Sonia Sarai, a Grade 12 student at New Westminster Secondary. While she loves the hands-on nature of many of her classes, Sarai, who hopes to study business and law at UBC, wonders if universities will struggle to assess the graduating class of 2019/20.

B.C. started to roll out its new curriculum, mostly to younger grades, in 2015, and it was expanded to Grades 11 and 12 this year.

The changes are intended to give today’s children — who make YouTube videos, fly drones and are more exposed to the world through the internet — more flexibility around what and how they study, and move away from textbook learning by reducing the requirement that all students read the same literature and do the same homework assignments.