I'm so jealous of next year's Year 12 class.
In Australia, the final high school exam you do is called the HSC, and it basically gives you a rank between 00.00 - 99.95, called an ATAR, which allows you to enter into universities. The better you do in your exams, the higher your ranking, and the higher your ranking, the higher your chance of being accepted into a prestigious university. So the HSC is a big deal that a lot of students stress over.
Well, NESA (the New South Wales Education Standards Authority) recently announced the new curriculum that is currently being installed into the years before my year. Next year will be the first year that the HSC exams will be performed under the new curriculum.
So why am I so jealous? The new curriculum is far, far easier than our current curriculum. Pretty much every subject, (but primarily English, Chemistry, Maths, Engineering and Physics) have been made easier because these subjects are notorious for being the difficult ones.
For our English exam, we are expected to write 6000+ words in essays, short and extended responses, and creative writings. There are six sections, so ~1000 words per section.
1st section - Short/Extended Responses
2nd section - Creative Writing
3rd section - AOS Essay
4th section - Module A Essay
5th section - Module B Essay
6th section - Module C Essay
Next year they are getting rid of the Module C essay. So students are only expected to write ~5000 words instead of 6000. This may seem fairly insignificant, but trust me, not having to write and memorise quotes from your texts for an entire fourth essay is a massive advantage. Grr. And on top of this, they are significantly reducing the difficulty of the other previously stated subjects because they are known for being extremely hard. That's fair enough I guess since they are overwhelmingly hard subjects, but still, it just irritates me that I wasn't born a year later so that I could have been doing the new curriculum instead of the old harder one.