Here it comes with all its mighty force. The HSC. 

Article by Susanne North for Sydney Morning Heard

Finally. After a painstaking 12 months of drudgery and high anxiety levels, the ordeal is reaching the beginning of its end this week. The first exams are starting, much to the relief of parents and students.

“I cannot wait for this to be over” is the repeated refrain of every parent with a child going through it.

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.574.0_en.html#goog_825649595Play Video

Play video1:07Screams, cries as students receive ATAR scores

Tears, shouts and quiet contemplation as Sydney students get their ATAR scores.

What makes me so sad and furious is that the last 12 months should have been a happy and memorable year, a year that our children should remember as a rite of passage into adulthood and not as a “slog fest” that rarely teaches our students critical let alone much analytical thinking.

When even the senior teachers of our school admits that the final years are all about “slogging it out”, and the “HSC is not about intelligence, but about perseverance”, then I really do question its merits.

As they regurgitate the curriculum over and over again, the pressure on the students to achieve almost unrealistic ATARS is extraordinary.

School counsellors and parents have seen an increase in anxiety levels and self harming among high school students, especially in the last two years of school, with many students suffering from depressing and panic attacks as they are unable to deal with the mounting pressure

Tutoring businesses are cashing in not just on low performing students but on high performing candidates who are seeking ATARS above 95.

Holidays are put on hold, life comes to a standstill, parents are tearing out their hair and consumption of Red Bull rises thanks to the HSC.

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This is an important year for parents and children. The year before offspring transition into the big wide world and before the family dynamics change for good. It should be a year of happiness, time for connecting with each other, investing in community by way of volunteering, learning some life skills that might come in handy when writing the first CV. It should be a year of finding out more about their strengths and talents.

Yet the last 12 months of school in NSW are marked by incredible tension, time pressures, sleep deprivation and managing the child’s nerves and time to the detriment of precious family life.

Some parents don’t even dare to ask their child to empty the dishwasher anymore.

How do parents cope with children who are not motivated or academic? How are they getting through the last year of school?

What’s missing in this education system is a holistic approach where children are valued for who they are and not the final mark they produce.

Instead, in their final year, they become an anonymous “student number” who receives half of their final mark from external markers who do not know them let alone understand the context in which they have been taught or raised.

What we need is a system where education enlightens our students and not stunts them in their emotional and intellectual growth.

Susanne North is the mother of a child sitting the HSC. She is a family educator for a Catholic primary school in Sydney.