There were no tears at Colo high school on Tuesday. No curveballs, either. Instead, students emerged from their first HSC exam, bleary-eyed but excited, to chatter in nervous huddles.
“You can tell with just a look whether it’s been OK,” says Vanessa Pilgrim, deputy principal and former English teacher at the North Richmond school. Two decades into teaching, handling nerves hasn’t gotten any easier.
“You don’t sleep the night before, worried whether you’ve prepared them,” she says. “I hang out for the time when they’ll come out and tell me whether it’s OK or not.”
This year, a record 76,000 students are sitting the New South Wales Higher School Certificate (HSC), with the exam season kicking off on Tuesday morning with compulsory English 1.
Over the next 19 days, 124 papers will be rolled out, a “huge logistical operation” for the NSW Education Standards Authority (Nesa), schools and staff, according to the Nesa CEO, Paul Martin.
Year 12 student Amber Sherrard says she was “overwhelmed” by the difference between practice exams and the real thing.
“Seeing our student numbers made it feel so much more official and real,” the Colo student says after completing the test.
“When I came to school it didn’t feel that different – I was like, ‘No way I’m doing my HSC today.’ But then going in it quickly became more serious.”
Sherrard tried to keep a calm facade, opting to relax on Monday evening and “accept this was what was going to happen”. But she found herself waking with dread in the night.
“I had a lot of school-related dreams,” she muses. “One where I forgot to bring my blazer, another where I was at an airport … but it’s never as dramatic as you think it is [going to be].”
Her peer Jacob James had a different tactic. Asked whether he slept on Monday night, he replied simply, “no”. But the vibes were higher on Tuesday.
“I played some good music [before the exam] and hoped for the best,” he says.
“Some 80s rock, some more modern jams, I was in the mood so I was just in my car listening to music. I just decided to trust myself – knowing I’ve done this for a whole year and have to believe in myself.”
Tuesday’s exam had two sections – the first requiring short answers to previously unseen texts or images, the second featuring a longer essay based upon texts studied throughout the year.
On TikTok, students expressed mixed reactions, with one user commenting “English paper 1 was actually a cutie patootie.” Another wrote “Shocking! Actually I liked it.”
The lack of huge surprises in the test paper was a weight off students’ shoulders before they return to sit English paper 2 on Wednesday, which will run for two hours and require two essays and a creative work.
Final Atars will be delivered on Wednesday 18 December, with half of the mark derived from the exam period. But for many, it won’t be relevant.
A record 27,000 year 12 students applied for early offers through the Universities Admissions Centre (UAC) this year, an 18.95% increase on 2023.
Conditional offers, which used to be offered as early as March, began being issued last month – a recommendation under the Universities Accord to delay the practice lest it cause universities to “favour students” with personal or socioeconomic advantages.
James has been offered early entry into a couple of physiotherapy courses, but is hoping to travel overseas to play professional soccer. His schoolmates Cade Morgan, Brooke Russell and Laura Henderson have also been offered early entry – across primary education, physiotherapy and performing arts.
“It takes some stress off,” Morgan says. “You still have to try and do your best because you owe it to yourself but it relaxes you through the pressure.”
Sherrard has a different approach. She’s planning to take a gap year before deciding what to study.
“I want to keep learning, experience life without school, and then we’ll see,” she says, before passing a knowing look to her deputy principal. “Miss Pilgrim wants me to be a high school teacher.”
