NSW School Certificate Going

The NSW government has announced that 2010 is to be last year of the NSW School Certificate. It will be replaced by a statement of achievement when students leave in Years 10, 11, or 12. Students who complete Yr 12 and sit for public exams will still be awarded a Higher School Certificate.

The current requirement for students in NSW is that until they reach the age of 17 they must be:

• studying at school, including Vocational Education & Training (VET) subjects. Some VET subjects can be studied at TAFE; OR
• in “full time” employment of 25 hrs/week or more;OR
• in full-time training eg at TAFE 

School and VET subjects are approved by the NSW Board of Studies. ¹

The School Certificate has been reviewed several times, but the previous Labor Government continued to support its existence, even as other states recognised the declining value of theirs. Today, the announcement has finally been made. A brief summary about the school certificate can be found on Wikipedia ²

In preparing this post, I looked at:

1. http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au 
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Certificate 

John