The HSC convention that might be past its use-by date

Three-hour HSC exams should be substantially shortened, education leaders have said, because making students sit up to 15 hours of tests is unnecessary and may be hindering their academic performance.

Many Higher School Certificate exams have been three hours long since the current system was put in place in 1967.

But, since then, we’ve had the advent of the desktop calculator, personal computers, the internet and generative artificial intelligence. And since 1986, assessment tasks have been used to calculate half the marks of the certificate. Despite using the results of assessments throughout the year, the final exam length has not changed.

“While I appreciate that the NSW Higher School Certificate is recognised as the gold standard across the education sector, I am perplexed as to why it requires a three-hour examination as the standard examination length,” said Peter Fowler, chief executive of the Anglican Schools Corporation.

“What are we preparing our students for by insisting that they sit a three-hour examination? University examinations rarely go beyond two hours.”

Dallas McInerney, head of Catholic Schools NSW, who raised the idea at The Sydney Morning Herald Schools Summit earlier this year, said there was still a place for extended essay responses in exams.

“Any call for shorter exams to cater to the sensitivity of the TikTok generation should be utterly resisted,” he said.

But he added that skilful test design could overcome concerns around the validity and reliability of a shorter examination.

Education Minister Prue Car’s office said there was “no immediate plans” to change the HSC.

“Any potential changes to the HSC would involve close collaboration between NESA, school sectors and workforce representatives, and include public consultation,” a spokesman said.

NSW Teachers Federation deputy president Natasha Watt said HSC exams need to be fair and give students the opportunity to show what they know. “Putting kids under greater time restraint will only jeopardise their ability to do well in the HSC,” she said.

Thomas Hassall Anglican College year 12 student Annabel Cook finished mathematics extension 2 last year. She had a wobbly start to the paper and was thankful for the longer, three-hour time so she could recover. But she questioned the current length of exams.

“In terms of an HSC that’s training us to be workers and educated people who can think critically, I’m not sure if that three-hour model is necessarily the most applicable,” she said.

Her year 12 classmate Alex Lotorto said he liked three-hour exams because he wanted “time to get tested” on everything he’d studied.

Fellow year 12 student Henry Lowe said handwriting was difficult over three hours and he now practised on weekends “to get up to scratch”.

Principal Karen Easton backed a rethink of long exam times, saying the current system “doesn’t necessarily allow them to show what they know and can do”.

“One of my concerns is for any student who might have a medical or a learning challenge because the current model is very much about knowledge regurgitation,” she said.

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