To whom it may concern,

We as part of the student body would like to contact you on behalf of the Year 10 cohort regarding our upcoming exams and assessments. We feel it is unprofessional of our teachers to notify us of the rescheduling of our assessments and examinations four weeks beforehand (that is if all exams and assessment are to be taken in week 10). In the school assessment policy it specifically states that teachers have the obligation to notify students of the assessment schedule with adequate time beforehand so they may prepare. It can be collectively agreed that notifying students who have never taken an examination before, that they have five exams to prepare for as well as uncompleted Term one assessments and term two assessments is ridiculous. Our reasons to prove our case are as follows.

At the start of the term we were informed by the school that will be moving to online learning and that test and exams were cancelled until further notice. We were then informed near the end of Week 5, that we will be returning to school by teachers with no official email sent. Some classes were told the 26th of May and some were told the 9th of June. We had to then ask about the exams and were told that we will proceed in taking them. This is an incredibly short notice if you take into consideration that the students, nor their parents, were ever officially told by the school that school will be reopened, let alone exams were going to be returning. Not to mention, that is, for some of us, this will be our first ever formal exam. We as students, were not and are not prepared to take exams and assessments from Term one.

The school has said countless times that they care for our mental health, but continuing to assign work to us while knowing it will inevitably increase the burdens and amount of pressure on us, is not ‘caring’. Just because our learning has moved to online it does not mean that we have excess time and therefore it does not give teachers the right to assign us more than double the amount of work they gave us when we were doing face-to-face learning. Not to mention the stress of the upcoming exams and assessments that we were not informed would be happening nor are prepared to take. We have been given less than 3-4 weeks to prepare and retake assessments that were canceled in Term 1 and the semester exams, which we still have no formal information to base any of our studying on. Now, we have to study for Term 2’s exams and assessments, while teaching ourselves the content from Term 1, because the majority of us forgot the information due to the stress and panic that came with the Covid-19 pandemic.

We students do not feel adequately prepared to take our exams and assessments because of the short notice. The external factors combined with the stress of school is a lot to handle. A report before the start of the pandemic stated the average student of today has the same level of anxiety as a psychiatric patient from the 1850s. A huge contributor to this factor is school. Work is piled up on us, and as well as trying to live a healthy lifestyle and get proper sleep and exercise, the amount of stress from school and pressure to do well would be overwhelming to anyone. As a matter of fact, it’s almost impossible. There are students who have had to make choices on whether they take a break for their own mental health, or exert themselves to the point of exhaustion by trying to keep up with their classes. The school took a step in the right direction when it lowered the class time from forty minutes to thirty, and we were pleased to hear the school respond appropriately to our feedback, however not all teachers are following this, and many of our classes run for forty minutes.

According to the Sirius College website, “ [Sirius College] understand[s] that every student has different... learning needs. With... appropriate use of differentiation...each student’s particular needs are met”. On behalf of the Year 10 student body we implore you to take into account our needs and “ assist [the] students” by cancelling the assessments we were supposed to take two months ago.

• Reference to the anxiety point

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/anxiety-files/200804/how-big-problem-is-anxiety