From the Principal

MEASURING

From the Principal

On Wednesday 12 October the Year 12 HSC exams began. The tension in the air was palpable for students, exam invigilators and staff. That morning, on the ABC Breakfast Show, the presenters wished all Year 12 students in NSW good luck and shared an important piece of advice: “Remember your HSC results don’t define you and won’t determine the rest of your life.” It is to be expected that the start of the final exams is scary and all-consuming for students and parents. It also feels extremely high stakes for schools and in this sense the media does not help. Schools (particularly in the independent sector) are measured by their published ranking when HSC results are released. If you are not ranked in the top 150 schools based on your students’ HSC results, then academics are perceived as a problem at the school.

As an educator, none of this makes sense. How is it that the complexity of learning, and a journey that spans 13 years of a student’s life, can be reduced to a single number? When parents share with me that they are concerned about academics at HVGS and I ask them about the evidence they are using to make this claim, invariably they cite whether HVGS is ranked in the top 150 schools. This metric is the only tangible one that seems to matter, despite most parents believing (as the ABC Breakfast team do) that a number does not define their child. Why then should it define schools or be the key metric to determine the success of our learners? thinking, agility, resilience, the ability to work collaboratively and solve complex, real-world problems, then why do we place such high-value on final test scores? How do we institute a fundamental culture shift towards measuring what we most value in our young people?

The first step is to be courageous and clear about what we value. This includes spending time listening to the concerns in the community about academics and facilitating an alternative understanding about learning. It involves placing each individual student at the centre of our thinking and recognising that one exam grade will not define them. Exam grades might open some doors and close others, but alternative pathways exist throughout our lives and rarely is that path direct and smooth.

Like all Year 12s across the state, our students are worried, but I would hazard to guess that the vast majority see these exams as one of many stepping-stones towards their future. At HVGS we get them ready for their examinations and do more than that; we stay committed to helping them become good human beings who love being part of a community who sees them for who they are and who they can be.

Visit Rebecca’s blog to read the full story.