When does my child need to choose Year 11 subjects?

Year 10 subject selection arrives with a glossy booklet, an evening presentation, and a deadline about two weeks later. Families who have not thought about it before that evening tend to decide on the drive home, usually on the basis of which teacher a child likes and a rumour about scaling. The decision deserves better, and the way to give it better is to start earlier and break it into stages, each with a single question to answer.

The first question is about doors, and it comes before any talk of scaling. Medicine and most health pathways recommend or assume Chemistry. Engineering assumes Mathematics Extension 1 and usually recommends Physics. Law and the competitive humanities degrees reward English Advanced and an essay-based subject. A student who has not decided on a career, which is nearly all of them, should choose a pattern that keeps three or four doors open rather than one that commits to a single door. The cheapest insurance in the HSC is a subject that appears in the assumed knowledge of two different degrees.

The second question is about strength, honestly measured. Families are optimistic about the subjects a child enjoys and pessimistic about the ones a child complains about, and neither feeling is a mark. The most useful thing a parent can do in Term 2 is ask each Year 10 teacher whether the student could reach the top band in that subject with the right work. Teachers answer that question more candidly than they answer 'how is my child going', because it asks about a ceiling rather than a report. A subject where the honest answer is no belongs on the list only if a pathway needs it.

The third question is scaling, and it belongs here rather than first. The rule that resolves almost every case is that a high band in a modestly scaled course beats a low band in a strongly scaled one. Families who choose Physics for its scaling and produce a Band 4 have been punished by exactly the mechanism they were trying to exploit. Families who avoid Legal Studies or Business Studies for their scaling and give up a likely Band 6 have paid for a rumour. Scaling rewards marks; it does not create them.

The fourth question is load. Ten units count towards the ATAR, the best two units of English plus the best eight from everything else, so eleven or twelve units buy insurance at a real cost in time, and three extension courses in one year is a schedule few students survive well. Check the assessment calendar for the major works: Extension 2 English, Drama and Visual Arts each carry a large project, and two of them together is a workload problem, not a talent problem. A pattern that leaves no rest day in the week is wrong before it is chosen.

The last question is interest, and it decides between the options that survive the first four. Interest is not sentiment; it is the reason a student does the between-session work without being asked, and that work is where marks are actually made. A student who likes a subject will read around it, attempt the harder questions, and treat the criteria as a puzzle rather than a threat. That behaviour is worth more marks than any scaling table, which is why interest belongs at the end of the sequence but never off it.

Families who work through the sequence usually find that the decision makes itself by the third question, and that the selection evening becomes a confirmation rather than a scramble. Those who cannot resolve a conflict between strength and interest should have the conversation with someone who has seen many patterns play out; it is an hour that pays for itself many times over, and it is why every MA99 engagement in Year 10 begins with the subject conversation in writing.

Edward MaDirector, MA99 Education