I teach in QLD so work in a different system, but here year 10 marks don't count for anything as far as uni entrance is concerned. Yr 11 and 12 are the important years. The problem with failing yr 10 is that it will make it more difficult for her to achieve high senior grades without the background knowledge. Not impossible though if she wants it badly enough.
Also, if you don't go straight to uni from high school they class you as a mature age student and entry is not reliant on high school marks anymore.
It is hard being a teenager... work on getting her attitude right. There are always alternative ways to get where you want to go, her future really isn't determined by how well she does at school.
I went through the NSW HSC system. I was also similar to your DD in that I had a fractured school and home life. I did very well at school until my parents divorced... usually in the top 5 students for any subject, except maths, which I struggled with. Now where I'm taking this is here: I was naturally bright but due to disruptive forces beyond my control I didn't do very well in high-school. I basically only kept my head above water. I got a few A's in subjects I didn't have to try with like Art, Agriculture and English.... but otherwise i was just managing to pass most subjects. This was how it was in year 10. But I went on to years 11 and 12. I only just passed my HSC... but I did well in English (in the top 15% of the state) which seemed to account for a lot. I got into Uni based on an interview and my portfolio... studied Visual Arts. Dropped out after 2 years (although I passed everything, the lecturers were creepy). Returned 10 years later as a mature age student, my life all peaceful, and completed a Fine Art degree here at Monash graduating in the top 5% of my course that year.... Distinction grade average in all subjects.
So what I'm trying to say is... I think... assess her wholistically in terms of her intelligence. School grades are not always reflective of ability. My situation also shows how others things like motivation, persistence and other emotional intelligences will get you there in the end in terms of success.
By all means encourage her to do the VCE... but maybe focus on helping her to resolve any issues (as a foundation to success) before wondering how to get her results up. Some kids can get good results no matter what is going on in their lives, but from my experience, that's a rare kid.
It's great she has you on her side. My parents were both oblivious to my school life. My mother washed her hands of me after grade 4 wheh she realised she couldn't drill my times-tables into my head.... and my Dad just had his own life. My best friend made sure I got into uni by pressuring me to apply and go to the interview. Your SD is very lucky
It sounds like she is doing a VCE subject in year 10?
Both my DD's did this with one not doing that well. She also didn't have a clue what she wanted to do after she left school and is now at Uni 5 years after finishing VCE.
It is open week at the Uni so it might be helpful to have a look at them to see if there is something she might be interested in. This will also help her do the right subject as some courses need certain subjects to get into. Some sort of English is a must then the others are picked from the areas you think you will need to get into Uni.
It's a very daunting time both for student and parent/carer having to pick subjects to get into Uni a few years down the track.
After talking to her about what she thinks she would like to do talk to the careers person at the school as they are usually more in touch with what is needed for Uni.
These are just some of the things we did so I hope these ramblings help
It's funny, DD has gotten a D before and been happy about it. Cos its a PASS after all
She does know what she wants to do after VCE and that does make it easier for me (!) when it comes to the guidance part of it...
There will be a few different open days coming up, you might like to go together and see what takes her fancy?
It might be good for clarity and inspiration, but you are right - at only 16 its pretty hard to know what you want to do. She might think about doing several DIFFERENT things, but that's ok, it just means to keep her subject selection pretty broad for yr 11.
I'd try to keep her there, average marks aren't bad marks and it's a big scary world.
We have the deal that I will support my DD through Uni (staying at home etc), low board etc, if she wants to leave school the rent goes up and she doesn't get school holidays. Oooh that sounds like blackmail doesn't it
But it's not - just the way it will be in the real world....
Is a D a pass down there? It isn't here, poor QLD kids.
Hardly any kids know what they want to do when they have to choose their senior subjects.
School has to be a little bit fun so even if she wants to do engineering or the like, encourage her to choose at least one 'bludge' subject. By that I just mean something she really enjoys and will find a bit easier than advanced maths and physics. I teach maths and science but really hate it when students are told they 'have' to do all maths and science to get a good uni entrance score. It just isn't true, and makes yr 11 and 12 difficult and stressful.
Her marks now are basically no indication of how high an ENTER she will get - AT ALL.
The only guage you have is her work ethic and her class attendance - because ultimately it is her attitude not her previous marks, that will determine her committment to the studies she is about to undertake.
WRT to her marks in her VCE Biol - the way the ENTER score is calculated takes int account a specific number of unit marks - ie - to gain a VCE you need only to have16 (in my day) units (1 + 2 and 3 + 4) So if she has this extra subject in year 10, and still completes 6 subjects next year and 5 in year 12, she will have the pick from the BEST scores of all her units.
That's not very clear lol. Essentially, if she passes all her other subjects (attains an S) then the results from Biol may not be needed to make up the aggregate that is the ENTER score.
Sit down with her and assess which subjects she wants to do, pull oput the VCE course guide from VTAC and work out what uni course she is interested in , its pre-req's and ENTERS - remember - the higher the ENTER doesnt necessarily = better courses, arts subjects often have more emphasis on interview and portfolio to get into uni.
I think I should have worded my question a bit differently. I'm not overly concerned about her school performance nor about her lack of direction. She has many great qualities and while she could do much better at school than she currently is, I have some strategies for encouraging her and I think things will work themselves out in the end. She's the sort of kid who will find her way and TBH after getting here as someone who didn't attend school, had taken drugs and was being taken off for weekly drug and alcohol tests, whose boyfriend was a drug dealer and who was very close herself to being put in juvenile detention ... I think she's doing pretty well and keeping her safe and out of trouble matters much to me than her being a stellar student.
What I'm trying to say is that I'm used to grades A-E being given throughout high school. That makes it pretty easy to tell how you're child is tracking. These days they're only given a Satisfactory or Not Satisfactory until they do a VCE subject and then it's A-E.
So Satisfactory or Not Satisfactory doesn't allow me to gauge very well whether she's in the top bit of Satisfactory (As and Bs equivalent) or the average/below average (Ds and Es). My interpretation from having looked at her report and taking into account the only A-E score she got (ie. the D) is that she's doing averagely. That's really all I'm after - help interpreting her results so that we have a realistic view of how she's going. I mean, look, I know that she's not going to get into medicine/law etc. that's commonsense but, not having been through the Australian school system, I had no idea whether average VCE results would get her into uni. Nor am I hellbent on getting her into uni, if that makes sense, I just don't want her to be thinking for the next two years that she's going to uni if she's way off the grade. It's really about giving her a realistic view of how she's going so SHE can understand what's going to be required of her. I think looking up the average VCE score (53.9) has helped me get a handle on it - that would basically mean that she would struggle to get into a lot of Melbourne-based unis and TBH that might be the greatest motivator I could ever use. If she knows that she might have to look at going to a regional uni, I think we might see a significant extra effort being put in. She won't be keen to leave the bright lights of Melbourne!
How does everyone else work out how their non-VCE child is doing? How d'you tell from the report? Or d'you base it more on what the teachers say?
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I teach maths and science but really hate it when students are told they 'have' to do all maths and science to get a good uni entrance score. It just isn't true, and makes yr 11 and 12 difficult and stressful.
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