Thanks to both of you! First off, I was seriously doubting my ability to pursue maths (which I thought I had a passion in), because of the reasoning that if I was really meant for this, I would get full marks for every test. It became somewhat of an identity crisis.
Do you know why your school is so against it?
I think they are afraid of students messing up and not getting good marks on the exams, and think maths is too content heavy of a subject to accelerate. In line with this, although there were plenty of humanities, business, and english subjects available for acceleration in Year 10, the subject I really wanted to do - physics (along with chemistry) were not available for acceleration. When I asked, they said students in year 10 are not mature enough to do well in physics and chemistry.
Some other reasons they gave me:
- We think students do better if they study methods 3/4 and specialist 3/4 together. (From my perspective, I would prefer to do methods 3/4 first so I can focus all my attention on it, then do specialist 3/4 the following year).
- From past experience accelerated students don't do well in methods 3/4.
- We only accept top of the line students. (this year only 3 students accelerated, apparently all averaging 100s).
- Students are not mature enough to handle the workload of an accelerated maths subject.
They were also trying to convince me to do further mathematics for some reason.