Tell your HSC kids: ‘Don’t do it for me, do it for yourself’

October 1, 2026 — 8:00pm

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My eldest daughter sits her HSC from October 13, so this is very much my first rodeo. Bear with me.

She’s at a public high school, and over 13 years of having my kids in classrooms I’ve done the full tour: Catholic primary, a private girls’ school, a private boys’ school, and now the public system.

But there’s one thing I’ve watched all of them fumble in the same way, and it has nothing to do with fees or facilities. It’s what we tell average kids about the HSC, and more broadly about schooling in general.

If your child wants medicine or law or astrophysics, there’s no denying the number they get on December 16 matters. That’s not who I’m writing about.

I’m writing about everyone else. The great middle, the kids sitting somewhere between the 15th and the 90th percentile, which is to say almost all of them. The ones who were never in the running for a 99 ATAR, and who have worked out that the adults around them have quietly stopped expecting much, under the guise of “it’s too much pressure”.

We tell those kids the HSC doesn’t matter. It’s just a mark. There are a million pathways. And I don’t disagree. The HSC is not the be-all and........

© The Sydney Morning Herald