17 year old in need of help!

[Guest Evil-Lancaster]

hey, im 17 and am very confused on the schooling matter. Ive found out some infomation but it dosn't seem to fully make sense.

 

i turned 17 in November, and did my GCSE's last summer (June 07). It seems GCSE's dont mean much over here, or thats the impression that im getting.

I started 6th Form College, and did 3 months their before leaving just before my first AS exam.

What im asking is, where do i need to go and what do i do, i live in WA and and have found out i either need to go into year 11 or year 12, preferably year 12 because its with people my age but im not sure???

I know theirs high schools and TAFEs but im not sure which ones best for me either, i was studieing maths, biology, chemistry, philosophy at college, but over here i seem to need to do 6 subjects, it seems more like GCSE's?

 

also as i live in WA they do T.E.E's, ive heard its different for each territory of australia, but im not sure what i can do with my T.E.E's university wise?

 

their seems to be alot of issues with this, but no one seems to be able to answer all the questions, their are still some gaps.

 

if anyone could help me i would be incredibly gratefull.

 

levi x

[Guest D&JJ]

hey, im glad someone is in the same boat as me.. im not sure aswell what to do, i mean im just about to do my gcse's and ive no clue what they mean over there and what they all convert to in their grades? (is an A realy and A) and what is a TAFE? apart from this i would like to ask if anybody knows if you do PE over their, whereas we can stop it after our GCSE's?

[LukeM]

Sure I don't have the exact same problem... but if after we visit Australia this Christmas for 3 weeks my parents decide to say we pick up and go, I WILL be faced with the exact same issue!! I would hate to have to do these 2 years again UNLESS the stuff is more interesting than it is here which apparently it is!

 

I had an ICT teacher from Sydney for a month before he got homesick and left again, but yeah he said the GCSE *equivalents* are far more interesting than what we're doing... in all subjects!! So maybe? I mean maybe I'd like to do it again if it is like he said it is!

 

Seriously all we do is coursework and exams and it's all just... ugh. It's disgusting. GCSEs have been the worst 2 school years of my life.

[Quoll]

Bottom line, if you want to go to university you will need a university entrance score. If you had done A levels then they would convert them but you havent so you need to do the TEE course which is generally 2 years. No one is very clear on how a late start into the program would affect your TEE score and if you want to get into a particular subject that could be a big problem. As for the course being more interesting than GCSEs - I suspect it wont be as hard and as there are no major exams at the end of it and much of the course having continuous assessment I suspect you may say that it is more interesting - less rigorous anyway and probably easier than what you would be doing back in UK.

 

TAFE - Colleges of Technical and Further Education - basically where kids go after school to learn their trade subjects but they also run courses for high school equivalence but for more mature people who dont want to be bothered with the nit pickingness of school. A more adult learning environment really.