Seriously - why the hell is English compulsory? (1 Viewer)

[Drdusk]

would we really appreciate having to compete with students who have had tutoring since they were 3 years old in math and who now are Gods at it? Personally, I don't think my daily visits to Khan Academy could ever go toe-to-toe with tens of thousands of dollars of tutoring from a young age. I by no means support English - but I can see a reason for having it.
Please debate - I am keen for feedback

I wouldn't mind. There's not that many of them out there, if anything there's hardly any. Those that are that good are part of the few who represent Aus in the Math Olympiads. Not concerned about that.

 

[Pedro123]

Not really. (Warning, weird useless flex alert).
I think of myself as a good math student (Accelerating the 4 unit course this year), and I haven't ever made it to the selection camp for maths olympiads. I have come close but never reached there. The skills needed for math olympiad are very different from school skills, because of the focus on problem-solving as opposed to just questions.
Majority of kids I know from work go to private schools, and they ALL get tutoring. Many of them don't accelerate but are still doing 3 unit concepts in year 10. A lot of them we don't hear about because of that English mark dragging them through the mud. Funny story - one kid in my brother's year from year 7 tricked the school into consistently putting him into ESL while he spoke perfect english. He aced the ESL exam, and even though he was second to another guy (They did the same subjects) in all his subjects, he got a 99.95 while the other one got 99.8. Partly this was due to external performance, but also because one of them could not handle english as a subject.

But then another debate comes up - do the skills learnt in english need to be learnt by everyone?

 

[Drdusk]

I have come close but never reached there.

Case and point. There's not that many people compared to the state that would even come close to reaching the Olympiad level for Mathematics. Most are from the top 10 selective schools as it is so I don't see it as a problem.

 

[InteGrand]

I think a lot of people are overanalyzing this and forgetting the fact that the NSW ATAR Calculation is moderated and scaled off the English mark.

Every single subject is compared off the English course to determine "difficulty", and to change it would mean UAC needing to rework the entire HSC to ATAR calculation, whilst maintaining fairness with other states. It could have been a completely arbirtray decision made decades ago, but I think that this is the most pragmatic reason for English being compulsory - simply that it is too difficult to change.

Couldn't they just as easily make (say) Maths the compulsory subject that ATAR is based on (if there is a need to have one common subject)?

In other words, saying we need a common subject doesn't explain why English (or any particular subject) needs to be the compulsory one.

 

[Drdusk]

I think a lot of people are overanalyzing this and forgetting the fact that the NSW ATAR Calculation is moderated and scaled off the English mark.

Every single subject is compared off the English course to determine "difficulty", and to change it would mean UAC needing to rework the entire HSC to ATAR calculation, whilst maintaining fairness with other states. It could have been a completely arbirtray decision made decades ago, but I think that this is the most pragmatic reason for English being compulsory - simply that it is too difficult to change.

Yeah I’m aware of this but it doesn’t justify keeping it compulsory. Not a fan of this system

 

[Time&moretime]

'Seriously - why the hell is English compulsory?' Because Hell is empty & all the devils are here. Tempest

 

[Trebla]

I think a lot of people are overanalyzing this and forgetting the fact that the NSW ATAR Calculation is moderated and scaled off the English mark.

Every single subject is compared off the English course to determine "difficulty", and to change it would mean UAC needing to rework the entire HSC to ATAR calculation, whilst maintaining fairness with other states. It could have been a completely arbirtray decision made decades ago, but I think that this is the most pragmatic reason for English being compulsory - simply that it is too difficult to change.

This is not true.

Moderating of internal school assessment marks is based on external HSC marks within a subject. It looks at each school's internal marks and adjusts them based on their performance in the external HSC exam for that subject. There is no comparison between subjects at all in how it is done.

Scaling (used to calculate ATAR) is based on the average performance of a subject's cohort in all their other subjects, not just English. It just so happens that because English is compulsory for everyone that the scaling results of English turn out to be close to neutral. Scaling can still be done even if English wasn't compulsory.

As a simplistic illustrative example, if say out of 10,000 students in Chemistry 5,000 of them did Physics. If the average Chemistry mark of those 5,000 students (that did both Chemistry and Physics) is higher than the average of the 10,000 that did Chemistry - and there are equal marks in all other subjects (to keep things simple) - then Physics will scale more favourably than Chemistry. In reality, this starts getting more complicated once you introduce variability in multiple subjects, but the principle is the same.

 

[totally_screwed]

OK bro. U are the dumbest person I have ever heard of in my entire life. Like fr, fuck off dude. U are soo dumb. First of all, if you think English should be compulsory, then you need to go and buy a fucking dildo, and shove it up your ass, because u are bent. Secondly, all your reasons are stoopid, because we learn the biggest bullshit I have ever seen in my entire life. If we learnt what you said, yeah english should be compulsory. But we don't. We learn dumbass stupid shit like Auden and dumb analysis, ok so fuck off. You are wrong. Enough said.

wtf is this cringe

 

[jimmysmith560]

In which Year did English become compulsory? @jimmysmith560

This requires us to go back a little bit in time, specifically 28 years ago (I call this "Modern History - Module Genesis" haha). In 1994, a requirement was introduced called the Breadth of Study. The Breadth of Study included two units of English, one unit from the Maths, Science or Technology areas as well as one unit from the Humanities, Languages or Creative Arts areas.

In 2001, more than 64000 students sat the first HSC exams that are based on the current structure. This includes Extension subjects, VET subjects and standards-based reporting of marks. A compulsory two units of English subsequently replaced the Breadth of Study requirement.

What is unclear is whether English was compulsory prior to 1994. What is certain is that the number of units to be included was definitely not part of the requirement prior to 1976, which is when the unit structure was introduced. There are three conclusions and suggestions that can be made and contemplated:

1. Alongside other compulsory subjects, English was made compulsory no later than 1994.
2. As a standalone compulsory subject (i.e. following the replacement of the Breadth of Study requirement), English became compulsory in 2001.
3. English may or may not have been compulsory prior to 1994.

I hope this helps!

 

[011235]

According to https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/hsc/about-HSC/history-of-the-HSC

It appears that English has always been compulsory (since the introduction of the HSC)

 

[Masaken]

According to https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/hsc/about-HSC/history-of-the-HSC

It appears that English has always been compulsory (since the introduction of the HSC)

Pretty cool link to read through... I think we should bring back Sheep Husbandry and Wool Technology <3