Re: Do marks and gradings in Year 9 and more so Year 10 have any performance correlat
Yes and no, people usually come out of nowhere in the later years. However, I think putting in a degree of effort in Years 9 and 10 really does pay off in the later years. If you enter the senior years with established habits and methods then you are really putting yourself in a good position to succeed later on. Some people can just "turn it on" in the later years, but for many people they enter year 11 without much experience with study and it does catch up to them. A lot of people will disagree with this, but I think effort in the junior years is highly underrated - I definitely dont think I would have done as well without it.
When I say effort though, I'm not saying you should do anything extreme - just a bit of work can set you up well. It's good to have a gradual increase in workload when heading towards the HSC year (and by extension uni).