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HSC students Mirutikka Surendiran and Sneha Parajuli depart Burwood Girls High School after their HSC maths exam on Monday afternoon.Credit:Wolter Peeters

The girls and thousands of other year 12 students never got to sit their trial HSC exams,having spent their last term of school in lockdown. It meant that for many,Monday’s maths exams were their first experience of sitting a three-hour test under strict conditions. Some schools,including Burwood Girls,ran shorter online trials over Zoom to compensate.

“We didn’t really have the ‘sitting down at a hall for three hours’ practice beforehand,” Sneha said.

“It was like jumping into something we weren’t really used to. With the whole lockdown period,it was a bit difficult. Even though we finished the topics in class it was hard to revise without being in the classroom and asking a teacher.”

There were some difficult questions and a few surprises given this was only the second yearthe new suite of mathematics syllabuses have been tested.

But the girls said students had come to “expect the worst from[the NSW Education Standards Authority],” especially after last year’s standard maths exam saw some studentsleave school in tears.

“Some of the questions took me by surprise - I’d never seen questions like that before. That was also very challenging and difficult,” Mirutikka said.

“But I think we were more concerned about time management and stuff,rather than the questions. If it’s hard,it’s hard,if it’s easy,it’s easy,but if you can’t do it in time,that’s frustrating ... Sitting there and seeing all the questions at once was very stressful. We couldn’t gauge properly how long it would take us to complete the test.”

Their teacher,head of maths Gavin Parker,said the paper looked reasonable and none of his students had left the exam hallsupset. “It looked like there were no nasty surprises,” he said. “I think if students were well-prepared they should have done pretty well.”

The end of another HSC paper on Monday will come as a relief to the state’s 56,600 maths students,many of whom have been struggling with motivation and itching to finish since their examswere first delayed several months ago.

“We’re working overtime over here,it’s obviously a lot harder to keep concentration ... Most people don’t really care the tests are going on,they just want it to be done,” Mirutikka said.

Sneha agreed:“I think before[lockdown],when the HSC was going on,people felt the pressure and that ‘this is very serious’. But when lockdown started there was a lot of talk about early entry and bonus points. I don’t think we really felt the pressure of ‘this is the HSC,it’s the be all and end all’,which is good - but we did lose motivation.”

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