Why HSC exams need to be abolished

THE HSC was developed in the 1950s for careers that no longer exist and technology that’s now completely outdated. It’s time to replace this education dinosaur.

It’s time to look for alternatives to the HSC to assess student achievement.

• Major overhaul of HSC to include mandatory pass mark
• Changes to HSC curriculum put academeics at loggerheads
• Formal testing of five-year-olds wont work
• Good teachers are the key to successful education

THE noisy clock, the stern examiner, the draughty hall, smelly biro ink on lined booklets. Do memories of school exams take you back to another time? The HSC hasn’t changed much: that’s why it’s time for a new approach.

The tweaks to the HSC announced last week are not what’s needed to transform schooling for the 21st century. The world has changed and so must learning and teaching, including how to measure student learning

The HSC was developed in teh 1950s and has become far less relevant.

In the late 1950s, the HSC was conceived as a fresh response to the changing needs of a growing nation. If you consider the changes to the workforce and technology since the post-war period, it’s clear that the same imagination is needed to transform schooling now, and that includes how we measure achievement.

Can we imagine schooling differently? Can we imagine learning matched to the needs of students? Can we imagine students working together to take responsibility for their own learning? Teachers deciding what to teach and how and when they work? Can school be different from what you and I experienced?

HSC exams have changed little over the last 60 years.

Let me be clear: the present curriculum, what students learn, is not the main issue. What makes one subject or topic more important or relevant than another? We can continue to go yo-yoing round the world on the curriculum but what we really need are ways to measure learning that are relevant for today’s world.

Some estimate that 40 per cent of today’s jobs will no longer exist in their present form into the future. Rapid change like this means flexibility, resilience and independent thinking should be seen as basic skills for schools to cultivate.

Education expert Dr Greg Whitby says it’s time for an HSC rethink.

A new approach to measuring what students learn is needed to better prepare today’s young people for tomorrow world, whatever that is.

We need to transform schools to produce more thinkers, leaders, creatives, innovators, collaborators, communicators and dreamers. The HSC was designed for another time. It’s time for pens down.

FLASHBACK: 2007 HSC ART