00:01Well school is back for Term 4 and Year 12's are starting to sit the HSC, the culmination
00:07of the past two years of study. The first exam is English Paper 1, a compulsory subject
00:12for the almost 75,000 HSC students this year. It's the first of more than 120 exams running
00:19over the next four weeks.
00:21The HSC is the largest public examination in Australia. It is a central part of our
00:26economic, educational and social infrastructure. Every student who comes through this HSC process
00:33ends up as a doctor or a lawyer or an economist or a tradie or an actor or a musician
00:39of the
00:40future and we've all gone through that over the last many years. There are 123 exams beginning
00:46today, over 400,000 separate exam sittings, there are 8,500 exam markers and 5,500 supervisors
00:56there are exams in every subject that students can choose and it's a large logistical exercise
01:01but we believe and know that the students are ready and we wish them all the very best.
01:06The NSW Education Standards Authority says the supervised handwritten exams are the safest
01:11way to assess learning with the rise of AI. To combat the risk of cheating, the next HSC
01:16group, which begins this term, will be limited to one take home assessment. For the students
01:21beginning exams today, 50% of their final marks have already been decided by assessments
01:26at school. Quite a few have already been offered a place at university. But for most of these
01:30exams will determine whether school leavers get into their university course of choice or
01:35another form of tertiary education. The Deputy Premier and Education Minister says it's still
01:40worth going to university despite glooming predictions about AI taking white collar jobs.
01:45I mean it's always worth investing in lifelong learning. That's always worth.
01:51The Minns Government is using the occasion to promote upgrades to schools, including 16 new
01:56classrooms at Sir Joseph Banks High School in Reevesby.
01:59It has been a really excellent upgrade that's been a very long time coming for this school. When I say
02:07a
02:07long time coming, I mean this is the first upgrade to this school in four decades and we're very proud
02:13to
02:14have delivered that. The exam period will end on November 5th with physics the last subject.
02:19Results will come out on December 16th.
