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How Do I Request My School To Offer A Subject That is not popular?

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mshah:
Hey guys, I’m currently in year 9 and was considering my VCE English pathways. My school currently offers all three main English options (Norm, Lit and Lang), but they will stop offering English Language next year. My class in particular has already started preparing us for literature by making us do things like close analysis of passages and then writing passage analysis essays. However, I really dislike both literature (because I find close analysis very time consuming and annoying) and standard English (because it is so bland and I hate picking out themes, characters, etc). I have looked into what English Language covers and from my understanding, it is the study of the language and linguistics, which seems super interesting to me, especially when comparing it to the other two. So, I’m now stuck because I really wanna do Lang but my school doesn’t offer it anymore and mainstream is boring and I’m worried I won’t do well in it, which may screw my ATAR. Can someone please explain how I should convince my school to start offering Lang again? (I have a few mates that may be interested in it too.)
Thanks.

Aaron:
So what you have to understand is that if you particularly are in the public/government school system, funding is tight regardless of where you are. Schools will not run subjects for the sake of it and will better distribute their human resources to other required areas.

In an ideal world, everybody would get to do the subject they wanted with no worries at all. It does not work that way, however, as there are several considerations e.g. timetable blocking, enrolments, specialist staffing for the subject, etc... Unfortunately the smooth running of the school's operations outweighs your personal subject preferences (as harsh as that sounds, schools too are a business).

Government schools in particular (at least the ones i've been at as a teacher) have a high proportion of part-time staff which makes the timetabling even more complicated because the allotments given to teachers are tougher due to their requirements too.

I'd recommend that if you and your mates want to do Englang, you go and speak to the Head of English or your coordinator/manager to discuss it. When I was in high school, I fought for about 2 years to get a VCE Computing class to run as it too is not a popular subject. Persistence pays off and if you can demonstrate you have more than 2-3 people that want to do it, they may just consider it. I've seen subjects with 1-2 students run at some schools, but jeez unless you're at an independent school I can't ever see that happening frequently.

Your other alternative is Distance Education (now known as Virtual School Victoria).

Cheers.

Stormbreaker-X:
Isn't it compulsory for schools to offer English Language? I am pretty school all schools offer it.
Yeah unfortunately my school is a public one and it sucks in terms of subjects allowed, if you really want it you can always try private schools.

Aaron:

--- Quote from: Stormbreaker-X ---Isn't it compulsory for schools to offer English Language? I am pretty school all schools offer it.
--- End quote ---
No to both.

Bri MT:
So I have two experiences here (in a public school) that you may be able to learn from:
1. I studied english language by distance ed in year 12 after studying literature in year 11 and not enjoying it. The process of getting approved to study eng lang DECV took me a long time - I'd wanted to swap to eng lang in unit 2 but due to funding allocation reasons, I was only able to swap at the start of year 12.

2. I studied physics in year 11 and the school was going to cancel it in year 12. The main thing we needed to do in order to have it run was collect a list of names of people who would studying physics in year 12 (this meant changing some of my classmates' minds) and present this to our co-ordinators.


I highly recommend you get your few mates who 'might' be interested and get them to commit + chase up the rest of the year level to see how many still want it to run. If you have less than 5 people who are willing to study it I cannot see it going ahead, but the more names you get the better your chances

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