Year 12 students, fear not – your score determines neither your worth nor your future
If you’ve noticed a sudden rise in fear-stricken, exhausted teens on your daily commute, you may well be wondering what’s going on. Why the sharp increase of sleep-deprived children? While it is the result of a looming terror, it isn’t Halloween. No, far worse. The long-awaited and intensely dreaded year 12 exams – the higher school certificate, as it’s called in New South Wales, with various other names across the country – are upon us, wreaking havoc on young people’s sleep schedules and cortisol levels.
Year 12. This is it! A series of standardised testing that we direct our country’s youth to undertake, with the outcome a single number used to determine the child’s current value and future potential. A high score, with the right combination of difficult subjects in the mix, will see the child go on to be the next tech billionaire. Excellent news for their caregivers if they’re hoping for a family yacht and a supported retirement. Whereas a lower score and/or the inclusion of lessvalued (dare I say, creativity-focused – ooft!) subjects will doom a child to failure and a future experience of homelessness.
Except, of course, that just isn’t true. But that’s just how many young people are being made to feel about this chapter in their lives. And while referring to homelessness might seem flippant, it is the example that comes to mind for me because I was homeless during my senior years of high school. I was so focused on finishing year 12 and attaining a good mark that even when I was hungry and lacking in resources I was marching myself into school and attempting my assessment tasks on whatever public computer I could access. I tried my best to stay the course but, unsurprisingly, it is really difficult to engage with and develop an awareness of new concepts and subjects when your basic needs aren’t being met. So while I loved learning when I had the capacity, I really struggled in those years. I made myself sick studying for year 12 – I put studying for the exams ahead of the work that I needed to do to make money to eat properly because, like many people who are putting pressure on themselves (or on the young people in their lives) to do exceptionally well in these tests, I was terrified.
Terrified that if I didn’t finish and do well, I was destined to be impoverished and disempowered for the rest of my life. That I would end up homeless again. Fear is powerful and often bound tightly with love. I appreciate those feelings and respect the love that drives them, but I know that I would have benefited back then from someone helping me moderate that fear with facts. And the fact is, the HSC serves some purposes (particularly in terms of formally gathering extremely limited education systems-focused data) but it does not define nor determine a child’s value. And these are children, too young to be trusted to vote, or consume alcohol, or sign contracts, and yet pressured to make decisions and be ohso mature for the sake of these tests and their FUTURE! The fact is, if university is your goal (and it may well not be) there are many pathways that will support you to gain the skills you need to succeed at university at any age, and various pathways that will provide the prized entry to a degree.
While I did complete year 12, aged just 17, and I did sit those tests, I ended up entering university and my first degree the next year as an alternative entry kid. And my life has not been one of failure. It turned out that where schooling offered no grace for the extreme circumstances I’d found myself in, university did. I still had to undertake the same subjects and assessments as my peers – the additional support ended with gaining entry – but that was enough. In the first semester of my first degree some students asked each other what their HSC results were but after that people stop asking. The conversation turns to content learnt, philosophical conundrums, professors liked or loathed, goals and grade range in the particularly tricky subjects.
I may not have aced my HSC but I did complete my bachelor’s degree, as many students who enter via nontraditional means do. I went on to complete a master’s, qualified as a primary school teacher and eventually returned to higher education to become a researcher. I completed a PhD in education this year, which means all of my mail now comes addressed to Dr Thunig. I am also an author, with my first book, Tell Me Again, due on shelves on 1 November.
This may all sound like bragging but that is kind of the point. I can’t tell you to not worry about your exams but I can tell you that your opportunities probably outnumber your fears and, whatever your grade is, that figure isn’t your worth.
I can’t tell you to not worry about your exams but I can tell you that your opportunities probably outnumber your fears