Man, fuck NESA* for thinking this was ok.
For further context, all NSW high school students need to take an English course** as part of their final studies.
The english exam is spoken about in hushed tones as the normalising factor that determines which bucket of scores you and your cohort are allowed to have. Go to a bad school? Good luck getting an ATAR that’s not a patronising ⭐️, meaning you scored in the bottom 30 percent. Million dollar+ local tutoring companies exist to pump out essays that can score in the high 90’s. Some parents spend tens of thousands on elementary school tutoring just to get their students into high schools with good english scores, or choose to uproot the ENTIRE family unit and move to whole new schooling areas for similar reasons. It’s a small price to pay if you want your kid to have a shot at entering an ultra-competitive undergraduate degree, like medicine. One day, your kid will thank you.
Imagine you’re in the final year of high school, and you’re being force-fed the panic-attack inducing lie that these high school -> university exams are the most important, fate-defining thing you’ll face in life. Then comes day one of a month-long exam season. It’s the big one. English part 1. All the pressure is on you to succeed. You turn the page, and you’re met with the visual equivalent of a conjunctivitis inducing wet fart right into your eye sockets. You and your gen Z friends have spent the little spare time you had shitposting on the internet, but it was enough to know exactly what chocolate starfish you’re staring into.
At that point, I would forgive any NSW high schooler for, once the pink eye settles, self radicalising via the treatises of a certain Ted K***.
*Formerly the Board of Studies (BoS), succeeded by the Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards NSW (BOSTES), now just the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA). These rebrands are important work!
**There are different english courses you can take. Each high school offers a different array of english courses. Explaining this more only awakens deep trauma within me.
***Ted Kennedy, of course. Please don’t arrest me, AFP