Masks to be compulsory during HSC exams (1 Viewer)

[notme123]

We got told if we cough once we're out.

was your school in a hotspot or something. thats borderline tyrranic

 

[uniqueusername1]

was your school in a hotspot or something. thats borderline tyrranic

no not really

The head was just reading the procedures from NESA or something lol

 

[uniqueusername1]

was your school in a hotspot or something. thats borderline tyrranic

well theres only one way to find out - if someone coughs.

Ik some pea brains in our school will do it on purpose. So we'll see.

 

[hellohowslife]

I imagine they would be relatively considerate if this were to occur to a certain extent, especially since a person may cough even when they are perfectly healthy. However, your Examination Mark will not be adjusted in the event where you are unable to complete your exam without a valid justification (such as an illness/misadventure form which NESA has to uphold). Getting kicked out of the examination room will most likely translate into a 0 as your Examination Mark, unless you have completed part (or all) of your exam and they allow for the paper to be handed in (although I'm not entirely sure whether this is a possible outcome).

0?? wtf

 

[BLIT2014]

Is it true for you guys that if you cough once they'll kick you out of the exam?

Thats what our head teacher has been ranting about and its terrifying.

I feel like they wouldn't.

 

[icycledough]

well theres only one way to find out - if someone coughs.

Ik some pea brains in our school will do it on purpose. So we'll see.

Considering these exams are 50% of the HSC and the most important exams to date, I'm not too sure they would

 

[Disssi]

pull the mask under your nose, what are they gonna do lol.

Can i actually do that?

 

[YourLocalDumbAss]

Is it true for you guys that if you cough once they'll kick you out of the exam?

Thats what our head teacher has been ranting about and its terrifying.

me: practicing to make myself cough to avoid English paper 1 and 2

 

[ExtremelyBoredUser]

All the people who joked about doing practice exams with masks to prepare for the hsc must feel real bad now

 

[mikrokosmos]

They won't kick us out, rather as you enter, if you evidently have extreme symptoms then they do something else idk what haha

And if you have smth like hayfever symptoms (that align w covid symptoms) you can get a doc certificate on the day and give it to them in the morning

 

[Disssi]

All the people who joked about doing practice exams with masks to prepare for the hsc must feel real bad now

That’s actually a good idea, I’ll start doing that

 

[BLIT2014]

That’s actually a good idea, I’ll start doing that

I actually was serious when I suggested it.

 

[CM_Tutor]

i had this thought yesterday and i thought it was a bit ridiculous like bro come on

the reason thyre doing this is to minimise closure of schools, but why are people still getting tested? if youre vaccinated, it doesnt matter whether you get the virus or not so who cares. why go through the trouble of getting tested and screw over yourself and your whole school's hsc?

If you're vaccinated and get COVID, you will likely have a much milder course of disease. You will, however, still be infectious and able to pass COVID to others. When I did my HSC, I remember thinking that the exam supervisors were about the oldest group of people I had ever seen all together other than in a nursing home. When I went to University, I discovered the exam supervisors there are even older - the HSC supervisors couldn't have been older that 150, on average, while the university supervisors were definitely well into the 200s. Now, there is a scintilla of probability that I might possibly be exaggerating on the numbers, albeit by only a miniscule amount, but they are certainly in the at risk category for serious COVID. As are teachers, adults you might meet on the way to school, and fellow students who may be unvaccinated for medical reasons.

I hope schools have been allowed to prepare to have HSC candidates take exams in a separate location if they are COVID-positive, no one wants any of you to miss exams after the dreadful year 12 you have endured, but public health and safety does need to be considered.

 

[CM_Tutor]

I imagine they would be relatively considerate if this were to occur to a certain extent, especially since a person may cough even when they are perfectly healthy. However, your Examination Mark will not be adjusted in the event where you are unable to complete your exam without a valid justification (such as an illness/misadventure form which NESA has to uphold). Getting kicked out of the examination room will most likely translate into a 0 as your Examination Mark, unless you have completed part (or all) of your exam and they allow for the paper to be handed in (although I'm not entirely sure whether this is a possible outcome).

If getting kicked out of an exam because of a cough or two results in a zero, NESA will have a lot of parents submitting a lot of paperwork to challenge decisions. If you do get kicked out, get tested immediately and have your parents notify the school that a misadventure form is coming and that the decision was arbitrary and unfair unless the supervisors can prove deliberate disruption or something similar.

 

[CM_Tutor]

NESA states the following:

"You must follow the day-to-day rules of the school or institution where you sit for your exams. If you do not follow these conduct rules, you may get zero marks for the exam or no result for the course. If this reduces your completed courses to less than 10 units, you may no longer be eligible for the HSC."

In the case of the 2021 HSC, the rules now obviously extend to include those covering COVID-19. However, I think that getting in that much trouble just because a student coughs is an extreme outcome and NESA will most likely be considerate (to a certain extent) of instances where coughing may not be associated with COVID-19, just mere harmless coughing.

Day-to-day conduct rules do not include exclusion from high-stakes assessment tasks for coughing. Excluding someone from starting an exam on the grounds of suspected COVID might be defensible, triggering the procedures for an estimate based on missing an exam by misadventure. However, faced with a medical certificate declaring some other condition with COVID-similar symptoms, or a very recent negative COVID test (which should be obtained immediately if any exclusion occurs, to overrule that decision for upcoming exams), a school would struggle to justify exclusion.

If a student is excluded, I recommend acting very fast. Contact a parent to contact the school. Get a parent to contact NESA, look for an opportunity to start the exam late (before anyone has left who could tell you what was on the paper) in a separate location in the school. And, if nothing is done very rapidly, get a parent to contact (say) ABC radio, who will call the Minister for Education's office to ask questions. This is not the kind of story that the government will want and I'd expect rapid action.

Please, everyone, try to remain calm. It's easy to catastrophise but the worst you are imagining is not going to happen.

 

[cloud_berry]

wait surely u can pull your mask underneath your nose though, no way im wearing that for 3 hours straight

 

[CM_Tutor]

wait surely u can pull your mask underneath your nose though, no way im wearing that for 3 hours straight

And when one of the exam supervisors asks you to put it back over your nose?

 

[YourLocalDumbAss]

‘I can’t breathe, I’m waiting for the exhale’ is a quote from the notorious juice wrld

 

[YourLocalDumbAss]

And when one of the exam supervisors asks you to put it back over your nose?

What if we make the tiniest hole in the mask that helps us breathe without getting distracted by taking it off for a second and putting it back on.

 

[idkkdi]

And when one of the exam supervisors asks you to put it back over your nose?

if they do it to someone who wears glasses, it's actually gg lol.