New South Wales year 12 students will sit the full HSC exams in person in eight weeks’ time with strict Covid protocols in place to lower the risk of outbreaks.
After weeks of uncertainty leading to calls for the end-of-year assessments to be called off, the state’s education minister, Sarah Mitchell, on Friday detailed plans to deal with the impact of the pandemic.
All exam supervisors will need to be vaccinated, and a Covid-safe plan will be provided to schools to enforce venue caps, social distancing and hygiene measures.
The revised timetable issued by the NSW Education Standards Authority (Nesa) runs for 19 days, beginning with English on 9 November and finishing with Food Technology on 3 December.
Mitchell said it had been a “challenging time” for HSC students but going ahead with the full suite of exams was the “fairest and most equitable result” for the class of 2021.
“We know it’s been really hard to study while you’ve been working from home, however the message I’m hearing from year 12 students is that they want certainty, they want to know when the exams are going ahead,” she said.
“It’s so important that each and every student across the state has the ability to show what they know. I’ve always wanted to see the full suite of exams go ahead … it’s great to give our year 12 students that certainty.”
The exams were initially delayed until November, with year 12 students to return to full face-to-face learning on 25 October.
HSC students were also prioritised for Pfizer vaccinations, with all students “strongly encouraged” to be fully vaccinated by 9 November.
Some HSC students had been calling for the exams to be cancelled altogether, citing the impacts of remote learning and Covid delays as punishing for mental health.
Mitchell said special consideration measures would factor in the impact of some students continuing to learn remotely while others in the state’s regions saw lockdown restrictions ease.
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“One of the challenges … will of course be taking into consideration student circumstances, [but] they have illness and disadvantage provisions they can use for students who are impacted,” Mitchell said.
“Individual and school contexts will be taken into account by Nesa when they moderate marks this year. Schools will be able to put in applications for entire year groups, particularly in hotspot areas in south-west Sydney.”
In the instance of a student testing positive or becoming a close contact at exam time, Mitchell said an existing “illness and misadventure” process would be available.
“They’ve used this for many years if there’s a natural disaster or a student is sick on a particular day, there are those provisions that already exist, there are ways we can make this work,” she said.
Atars will still be calculated from written exams, but results will be released earlier than the HSC on Monday, 20 January.
HSC results will be released on Thursday, 24 January.
Williams said students applying for university wouldn’t be impacted by the delayed release of results.
“Any student who wants to go to university will be able to do so,” Mitchell said.
“No student will be disadvantaged, no matter what they want to do they’ll have the opportunity to be considered for university positions if that’s what they choose.”
