Coronavirus: HSC class of 2020 is stressed and anxious

Students from the NSW south coast said they were worse off compared with their metropolitan counterparts as they prepare to take the HSC.

Batemans Bay High School Year 12 student Holli Pritchard, Picture: Sean Davey

After nearly half of her family property on the NSW south coast was burnt in the Black Summer bushfires, Year 12 student Holli Pritchard thought the year could not get any worse.

But the coronavirus pandemic compounded the “stress and anxiety” sparked by the summer’s deadly bushfires, the Batemans Bay High School student said.

“I thought (the bushfires) were bad enough to happen … there is so much pressure already this year,” the 17-year-old said.

“After the fires, finally everything settled down and everybody could get back to work, then floods came through, then COVID came through.”

Final-year students would normally spend the summer holidays — the six-week break between term one of Year 12, which started at the end of 2019, and term two in 2020 — with friends and was a time to unwind, Holli said. “During the bushfires, everybody was worried about their houses, friends and families so we weren’t really thinking about school. It was going on when we would normally have that time to have some peace and fun … but we never really got to do that.”

Students from the south coast say they are worse off compared with their metropolitan counterparts because of the dramatic sequence of catastrophic weather followed by a global pandemic.

Moruya-based Year 12 student Sevina Small said it was “hilarious” students from metropolitan areas thought they had it tough after she spent two weeks in January defending her house from bushfires in Mogendoura, a farming area 20km west of Broulee.

“They have so many more opportunities to start with than us, let alone when we all get them taken away,” the 18-year-old from St Peter’s Anglican College in Broulee said.

Another student from Carroll College in Broulee, Cameron Stocks, said the NSW Education Standards Authority effectively told students from the area to “suck it up” after “literally months of evacuation”.

“We haven’t been able to do anything or have a holiday,” the 17-year-old said. “The biggest thing that has let us down is the response — we have got very little in terms of help or assistance.”

Holli said Year 12 students in NSW should “definitely” be individually assessed for the impact of COVID on their HSC marks and Australian Tertiary Admission Rank as students in Victoria will be. Any negative impacts of the pandemic will be reflected in Victorian students’ ATAR scores to ensure “fair and accurate results in this unprecedented year”.

Fears of a second lockdown became a reality for Holli last week after a student at Batemans Bay High School contracted COVID-19 and forced it to close on August 11.

“It was like not again, when can this be over,” she said.