5 November 2025
North Shore student Ruby Frost found unexpected success in the HSC after facing bullying and health challenges that forced her to leave traditional schooling. Feeling hopeless, she transferred to TAFE Bradfield Senior College in St Leonards, where she found renewed confidence and a clear path toward a creative career.
Bradfield Senior College, a joint initiative between the NSW Department of Education and TAFE NSW, integrates the HSC curriculum with Vocational Education and Training, with a particular focus on the creative arts. The model allowed Frost to rebuild her confidence and pursue her artistic ambitions.
Recently named Dux of Year 12, Frost also secured early acceptance into a Bachelor of Creative Production in Media Arts at UTS. She credited Bradfield’s learning environment for helping her rediscover her potential. “The fact I can do my HSC has been incredible,” she said. Living with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, fibromyalgia and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, she said conventional schooling had been challenging. “But at Bradfield the teachers really supported me and treated me like an adult – it has really helped me thrive.”
Her visual arts major work — eight acrylic paintings inspired by the MRI scans and x-rays she has undergone over the years — reflected her experiences with chronic illness. “It was very cathartic, and being able to finally share the work with everyone was really rewarding,” she said.
Bradfield Senior College offers four nationally recognised TAFE certificates across the creative industries and general skills. “Everyone in Year 11 studies a Certificate II in Workplace Skills, and we combine this with a major year group project,” Frost explained. “I was part of a storyboarding team, worked on an animation project and assisted with directing, which really lit up my interests in film.”
Her mother Lou Johnson praised Bradfield for recognising her daughter as an individual and fostering her creativity. “Ruby’s three major works for art, drama and English Extension 2 have been extraordinary, and what she’s achieved goes beyond an ATAR – it’s the process and the experience that’s been so expansive and stimulating,” she said. “That’s true learning.”