Year 12 students don’t impress easily. By the time a cohort reaches their final year, they’ve done enough excursions, team activities, and school events to have calibrated expectations — and most activities don’t clear the bar.
Nazareth College‘s Year 12 Methods class cleared it. Their Urban Quest Melbourne CBD school excursion produced something specific enough that the students could articulate it clearly in the moments after finishing — not just “it was fun” but what it demanded from them and what it produced.
What the Students Said
The opening observation sets the tone:
“It was actually pretty fun. It was kind of exhilarating. I think we had a goal of trying to beat 50 minutes.”
That goal — 50 minutes — wasn’t arbitrary. The Urban Quest school leaderboard tracks the fastest winning teams across all school groups historically. At the time of Nazareth’s excursion, the all-time record stood at 50 minutes and 50 seconds, held by Melbourne High School’s Year 10 cohort. Nazareth’s team had studied the leaderboard before arriving. One team member — Yanni — had reviewed previous winning times and set the group’s benchmark before the Quest even started.
This is worth pausing on. A Year 12 student arriving at a school excursion, having already done competitive research, is not what most excursion providers generate. The leaderboard creates that motivation before the event begins.
View the Urban Quest school leaderboard →
On Teamwork and Strategy
The students were specific about what teamwork actually looked like during the event:
“Mainly just to strategize and communicate. Teamwork, working together. Sort of leadership — we all sort of stepped up at different times when we saw our strengths.”
That last observation — stepping up at different times when strengths were visible — is the most meaningful thing a team building experience can produce. Not a designated leader who leads throughout, but a group that naturally distributes leadership based on who is best placed for each challenge. That’s a sophisticated team dynamic that many adult workplace teams never develop.
The communication observation was consistent across multiple students:
“Communication yet again.”
The repetition is telling. When students independently name the same skill without prompting, it reflects a genuine experience rather than a coached answer.
On Connection and What the Excursion Produced
The social outcome the students described was specific:
“I think I got to connect more with my classmates.”
“It was great to get closer to people and also to work together as a team — and it was fun competition as well.”
For a Year 12 Methods class — a group brought together by subject selection rather than friendship — building genuine connections in the final year of school matters more than at any other point. These students will leave at the end of the year. The connections made in Term 1 or Term 2 are what carry them through the pressure of the final semester.
An excursion that produces “closer to people” as a reported outcome from multiple students is doing exactly what school coordinators plan excursions to do.
On Navigating Melbourne
“I learned my way around the city a bit better.”
Simple, but specific. For students who don’t regularly navigate the CBD on their own terms, the two-and-a-half hours spent moving purposefully through Melbourne’s streets — finding intersections, reading landmarks, making navigation decisions under time pressure — produces a genuine change in how they relate to the city. That’s a transferable skill for students about to leave school and enter a world that largely operates in cities.
What Winning Their Event Means
Nazareth’s winning team came first in their own event. Their finishing time places them on the Urban Quest all-time school leaderboard — the cumulative record of every school group’s best result since 2019. They didn’t beat the all-time record of 50:50, but their time is now part of the permanent record that the next school to run Urban Quest will study before they arrive.
That competitive continuity — your result becoming the benchmark for future schools — is what the students responded to most viscerally:
“Anyone can come and try to beat our time — we’ll see how far you get.”
That’s not a coached closing line. It’s a Year 12 student who is genuinely proud of what their team achieved, and who understands that the achievement has a permanence beyond the day itself.
For School Coordinators — What This Excursion Produces
Nazareth College’s Year 12 experience illustrates the specific outcomes Urban Quest consistently produces for senior secondary cohorts:
Genuine pre-event engagement — the leaderboard creates motivation before students arrive, which is unusual and valuable for Year 12 groups who have seen enough activities to be difficult to impress.
Natural leadership distribution — students stepping up when their strengths are visible, rather than following a designated leader, is a Year 12-appropriate team dynamic that the format produces structurally.
Named connections — students identifying specific classmates they got closer to is a measurable social outcome that carries into the final months of school.
Urban navigation confidence — moving purposefully through Melbourne’s CBD rather than “fluking it” is a transferable skill for students on the cusp of independent adult life.
Explore Urban Quest’s school excursions →
Read what other Year 12 cohorts experienced →
Contact Urban Quest for a school excursion proposal →
Nazareth College’s Year 12 Methods class is one of many Victorian Year 12 cohorts who have run Urban Quest CBD excursions. Other Year 12 schools include Waverley Christian College, Cranbourne East Secondary College, and Koo Wee Rup Secondary College.
