chxin Well I guess that depends on what subjects you plan to do. Like English is definitely a subject with skills you develop over a long period of time, similar with maths as well. However there are many subjects where what you do during year 9 or 10 doesn't make much of a difference. For instance, most science subjects end up just relearning the content you learn in year 9 and 10 plus some other stuff, and doing it earlier (as in doing y9/10 content) makes almost no difference.
Sure, you can argue that starting earlier can get you a higher atar, but most people don't need super high atars anyway. And like I said earlier, prepping for sehs can be beneficial for vce. It's probably pretty clear why learning science in general will help for vce (assuming you do science subjects), but the other skills you develop such as report writing are extremely useful for vce and often is the area people do worse in/neglect because they focus only on test performance. For those reasons, focusing on vce/school in year 10 makes only a small difference in your workload compared to also trying to prepare to get into a sehs.
Vce isn't some colossal mountain, it's just made out to seem this way. You can have a life while also doing amazingly well in vce.
