Debate about the School Certificate — again

By Jennifer Leete

With year 10 students having left for the year, questions about the timing of the School Certificate have come up again.

Both Federation and the Secondary Principals Council are on record as calling for the date of the School Certificate exams to be put back as far as possible in response to concerns from schools that it is very hard to keep year 10 "on task" once the exams are over. In 2004 the Board of Studies gave consideration to the timing of the exams but for a range of reasons concluded that, without significant changes to the format of the exams, it was simply not possible to push them back. For example, a move to more machine marking and fewer extended response or essay questions would have resulted.

The Board is operating within a very tight time frame to mark and make the School Certificate "packages" available to students. This is because a previous Minister, John Aquilina, made a commitment that year 10 would have their results packages before their last day of school and year 12 would have their HSC results before Christmas. It has to be said that there was no consultation with the Federation before this commitment was given. Following their consideration of this issue earlier in 2005, the Board of Studies did decide to put back the date by which schools are required to submit their school assessment marks for School Certificate candidates. This will be implemented from 2006. The idea is that schools may choose to schedule school-based assessment tasks for year 10 after the School Certificate examinations. We are yet to see if this will assist in addressing the issue of keeping year 10 "engaged".

Consideration of these issues with the School Certificate now, of course, occurs in the context of the announcement of a national testing program for year 9 students.

As previously reported, the Minister has asked Professor George Cooney to review the NSW assessments (for that read "statewide tests") in the light of the imposition of these national requirements. The future of the School Certificate is not specifically addressed in the terms of reference given to Professor Cooney.

Federation's assessment is that this is because the School Certificate examinations were seen to be "untouchable" because Premier Bob Carr was so personally attached to them, despite the fact that no other state in Australia saw the need for statewide external exams at the end of year 10.

Since Professor Cooney commenced his review, Bob Carr of course is no longer Premier. Does this mean that it might now be acceptable to ask whether the School Certificate exams have any future?

Jennifer Leete is the Deputy President.

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December 2005 contents