Thank you so much for this thread.
My year level got our first English outcome, YES OUTCOME NOT EVEN A SAC, and there were so many students saying, ah it seems I'm shit at writing now because I went from scoring 90+ in 7-10 English, to a 60-70% in year 11.
I am one of these people. I got a 73%, not that bar considering I forgot most of my ideas in the writing time and made most of it up on the spot. But there were a few students who feel like it is their duty to rub it in other people's faces that they scored 15-20% higher.
This makes me a little pissed off for this reason. Year 11 shouldn't be a competition, it should be about working with as many writing styles as possible this year to work out where your strengths are, instead of writing yet another text response because that's what we have been writing for as long as I can remember. I kid you not, the 4 out of 6 girls who scored 90+ in this outcome wrote a persuasive piece, because that's where most people's strength is (or should be) by year 11. I wrote a creative expository hybrid. I was happy with this because writing creatively is no where near my strong point, so I worked hard in preparation and I know that I need to work more on developing my creative and expository skills.
The couple of girls who I spoke to who got in the 90+ said they feel like they don't need to work hard in English because they think this outcome means that VCE English is easy for them. Well, I just want to see how they go for the rest of this year, let alone next year, it's going to be a rude shock if that's their attitude. One even said to my face, oh so you're not as strong a writer as you thought you were then, obviously referring to my 70+. Apart from being darn right rude I now have so much determination to work harder to developing my writing just so I can prove her wrong. Stupid, I know, but that's my goal in English and makes me want to work harder to achieve higher marks.
I believe it can be done. And it will be done.