Under pressure: exam time Credit:Janie Barrett We keep blithely announcing that VCE is just a number, that high school subjects are all irrelevant anyway and that life will be wonderful regardless of how much anyone studies. It's time we stopped telling students undertaking the first serious major project of their working lives that none of it matters. It matters very much to them. It's the culmination of 13 years of study. They've been asked to make mastering the demands of VCE their primary focus for two years. They're urged to use the results they achieve to determine the first choices they will make as independent adults about their lives. They know it does bloody matter.

There is merit in challenging the way the system forces students through such a crucible to assess their academic worth. There are questions to be asked about VCE's focus on drills and memorisation over creativity and problem-solving. And yes, we know that the study rankings any student receives can be influenced by many factors, such as the talent and skill of other students who take the same course or the relative difficulty of the actual exam. Add other variables – resources at home, quality of teaching, physical and mental health, learning difficulties – and we know that it's unwise for a VCE student to fixate on achieving a specific ATAR score. But instead of patronising near-adults with potted success stories of those who made it big despite their low scores, we should respect the challenge they've been given. Year 12 demands that students be organised, focused and ready to work long hours. To complete a suite of assessments and exams across at least five disciplines, they need to juggle competing demands. On exam days, they're asked to be agile thinkers, spotting trick questions, blocking out distractions and delivering on deadline. These are skills that will help them in any, and every, job they ever have to do in the future. Employers may never ask candidates what their ATAR was, but they'll be keenly interested in what referees will say about their work habits, their enthusiasm and their problem-solving skills.

This is why it's OK to celebrate those students who achieve high marks. The top rankings are extremely hard to achieve and worthy of congratulation. Whether those students go on to save lives, make millions or run the world is not the point. It's also why we look for the students who complete VCE despite serious obstacles, such as Tala Afshak, the refugee student who is sitting her exams while raising her brother – her mother died in the boat en route to Australia. Or Mai Duong, whose parents sent her over from Vietnam hoping she'd do well enough to win a university scholarship. The "score doesn't matter" premise could apply maybe to children from middle class families, who have the resources and networks to find other ways to security and success if their score fell short of their aim. Yet those attending the best private schools often feel under the most pressure to do well. For students from poorer communities, those whose families have not been to university, their ATAR can be literally life transforming, opening the way to choices they may never have imagined. These students will not take university for granted. And even those of us from middle class, well-educated families know that the choices made after high school can inform the rest of your life. You can drop out of courses, change your mind, go back later and learn new skills, but this period of life is transformative.