I'm concerned that the HSC reforms will increase stress and anxiety, not reduce them.

One of the significant aims of the reforms to the HSC that have now been released, was to reduce the stress and anxiety in our senior students.

Do we know what causes the anxiety? I would argue that we have not thoroughly investigated the causes of the anxiety, much of which could be attributable to changes in society and family situations such as both parents working longer hours. If we do not know what causes the anxiety in students and only try and attack the problems students have one at a time through psychologist visits, then we are unlikely to have the impact we desire.

Why less Assessment Tasks could increase anxiety. It makes perfect sense that if we reduce the number of assessment tasks, then we will reduce the anxiety in our students. This may not be the case. To take the extreme view (which has not been proposed) and remove all internal assessment, surely stress would decline. This may be true throughout the year, but stress and anxiety over the one high stakes exam would skyrocket. With 3 tasks in Year 11, the most likely situation is 2 x 30% tasks and 1 x 40% task, which means that each of these becomes increasingly important.

How were assessments different in the past? When I was in school, you did not necessarily know about tasks ahead of time, there was no 'formal notification' and you just showed up and did the task. There were probably more tasks to complete, but each of them was of little importance to the final grade (10%) but useful for bench marking what content you had actually learnt and what you needed to revise (Assessment for Learning).

Surely investigation tasks are great... or are they? In my experience, it seems to be the ongoing investigation style tasks that create the greatest anxiety for students with mental health concerns. There is always something more that they can do to improve, add to and work on an investigation until it is handed in. Where do you start? There are weeks of agonising over a long-term task like this, even if it is restricted to class time.

I applaud BOSTES for trying to reduce stress and anxiety in our students, but I am concerned that the proposed reforms may have the opposite impact.


If you suffer from anxiety, then consult a psychologist of call lifeline on 13 11 14