In the USA, we have this SAT (scholastic aptitude test) that high school kids wanting to go to college have to take.

This was my score back 49 years ago, in 1971. Way higher than I thought I'd get.

Question is did Aussie high schoolers take this test, or is/was there an Australian equivalent?

I do remember having a college classmate from Australia, so he probably had to take the SAT to get into my college in the USA.

Not in my time, I'm 50 now. To get into High school you must of passed your last year in Primary school which is year 6 and your about 12 years old. Then you went into high School which is year 7, In those days you could leave at 15 ,But I believe now you must finish year 12 ?

I’m in year 11 and no you don’t have to finish year 12.
You can quite easily drop out if your parents sign a document and your at least 16.
I’ve never heard of SAT or anything like it.
In VCE all your classes are written by the VCAA whom also make the end of year exam etc.

They changed the Vic leaving age in the early eighties. After is was realised that they were teaching them nothing useful in life.

I was at the pointy end of employment & you could not use people coming out of schools that were semi, or totally illiterate.

BurntoutElectronics ,

Hey your only a lad,, Hell I have underpants older than you ! I fact I'm still wearing them !
Stay at school! use the system to get ahead,,, I left at 14 and in job by 15 !!! Give up the Hamburgers and keep away from Women !

pete

In Oz, "college" has a different meaning than it does in the USA. Here, those who finish high school with a good enough 'ranking' can apply to do further education at university.

The system in use here for university admission is ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) which you can read about here: https://www.uac.edu.au/future-applicants/atar

However, a person in Oz can also sit the SAT under some circumstances. The University of Melbourne explains it here: https://study.unimelb.edu.au/how-to-apply/special-entry-access-schemes/access-melbourne-undergraduate/eligibility/non-school-leaver/scholastic-aptitude-test-sat

High school here is years 7 through 12 (ages 12/13 through 17/18). In my time NSW students could exit high school at year 10 after sitting the School Certificate exam. Those who did the extra two years sat for the Higher School Certificate exam (HSC) and they still do today.

In 2011 my state (NSW) abolished the School Certificate and replaced it with something that means nothing to me. You can read about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Certificate

Kids leaving school at Year 10 typically went into a trade and did industry-related courses part time during day and/or at night at what were called Technical Colleges, renamed TAFE and now, scandalously, either closed or mere shadows of their former selves as the NSW government turned its back on trade training.

An alternative to the HSC is the International Baccalaureate which is gaining favour in some areas here.

The other thing you can do here which has many advantages including funding is to go to Uni as a Mature age student ..""" Over 22 """ I got my diploma in photography at UTS that way . I did have to sit an education test though as I left school early ;
It had many advantages for borrowing money for the fees , Plus by then I had perhaps settled down a bit more. It worked out well for me I got my Diploma in photography

Pete

Well Pete I have zero interest in leaving school! Life will only get harder and more complex.
Plus my interests lie in quantum computing and future technologies etc. probably the biggest thing is getting those pesky global
Pollutions down. I hope that we’lol one day have full blown fusion reactors that don’t use radioactive elements thus no radioactive pollutants left over.
Right now would be a perfect time to introduce a replacement to coal stations but I don’t see that happening.
With current technologies I also see a few issues with solar and their recyclability which is rarely spoken about.
Did you know solar panels from dodgie Chinese factories leach out cadmium into the environment? Especially with heavy rainfall carrying the cadmium into the soil below! Also the only recyclable part of a solar panel is the aluminium frame leading thousands of tons of solar panel waste going straight to the top in a few years!
We’re already seeing it start to happen now!

BurntoutElectronics ,
Yes, that's the future I agree, If you work a job you're interested in it can by wonderful and you can achieve things If you work a job you hate it can be soul-destroying ,,so its best to have the option. My wife thinks like you , She was an Engineer and has a passion for Solar and Hydro. When I was younger I could not stay at school as my mind was interested in going to other places.

I have zero interest in leaving school! Life will only get harder and more complex.

My advice to teens is always to finish school with the best ranking you can. The main reason being that it gives you choices, and as you say life gets complicated after high school. I grew up with a few mates who left school early, often against their wishes of their parents, because they wanted to get a job and earn money.

A few of them went back and did their HSC as adults, and it was a very steep climb because they had to study at night after a hard day's work at their job and a few had already started families. I take my hat off to those guys. One of them now has his own accounting business, but he regrets having done it the hard way.

Pete,
I did actually have a chat with a guy from "exciton science" who clams to, with a group of researchers, have developed a fully recyclable solar panel! the downside? its liquid based and uses lead. plus as an extra benefit it only lasted a few days before it failed.
to me solar has a long way to go before its actually "green"

yes I sure like to keep my options open. I have photography as a hobby and develop my own film in a darkroom and even do prints with my enlarger.

GTC I couldn't agree more with what you say

In my school time, there were 3 schools

Infants School - Kindergarten for the 5-year-olds, followed by 1st grade, and 2nd grade.

Primary School - 3rd grade, up to 6th grade.

High School - 1st form through to 6th form.

Just after I finished school, they renamed the class names. 1st to 6th grade became Years 1 to 6, while 1st to 6th form became Years 7 to 12.

At the Year 10 level, there's the exam called the School Certificate, and you could leave after that if you wanted. Or you could continue on with Years 11 and 12, and do the Higher School Certificate after that.

From there, you could attend University or TAFE if you wished, or you could get yourself a job. And that was it for education.

If you left after Year 10, it would be expected that you'd take up an apprenticeship with a master tradesman. Although most kids don't appreciate it, being a good tradesman is the way to make a lot of money, especially being a bricklayer or some such. Or you can spend years at great expense in the university, and come out of it with a large HECS debt, no job and no experience.

From my schooling experience, there was absolutely nothing taught on how a workplace works, how you should behave in a workplace, how to get a job, or how to work with others. If your school had a careers advisor, it was allocated to the most hopeless teacher there.


I've heard that in America there is a thing called Middle School - not sure where that fits in.

I have photography as a hobby and develop my own film in a darkroom and even do prints with my enlarger.

In the last two years of high school I did all that, too. I built a darkroom in the crawl space under my parents' house. It was a very engrossing pastime, to the extent that one time my father knocked on the darkroom door and said "You know it's 3am and you have to be ready for school in 4 hours!" (He used to drop me off at school on his way to work.)

I used Kodak print paper of various grades and finishes, Kodak B&W film and Microdol-X developer. I got the old but excellently looked after 35mm enlarger for nothing from a neighbour who was moving house, and that's what got me interested in processing my own films and printing my own photos. I used to glaze prints on a piece of plate glass left in the sun. I loaded film into the developing tank while standing inside my bedroom cupboard and processed it in the laundry, being extra careful to clean up afterwards to avoid my mother complaining about "all of those smelly chemicals."

GTC

ah yes I don't know how many hours I've spent in my darkroom! nothings more satisfying than seeing an image appear on paper under a red light! unfortunately Kodak hasn't made paper in years but ilford still does.
I've developed everything from B&W to colour negative and even slide film! from as small as 110 cartridge film all the way up to 4x5" sheet film. a 4x5" colour slide is stunning! the colours simply can't be compared to digital and the effective resolution is in the gigapixels!

yes tell the man at teds camera store to bugger off with that tiny megapixel stuff because with 4X5" film you could enlarge it to the size of a building. you want to be damn careful with what you photograph on large format 4x5" however because each sheet is $7.70 without even the cost of processing!

Kodak hasn't made paper in years but ilford still does.

It's tragic what happened to Kodak but there are similar stories of companies failing to see and deal with paradigm change until it was too late. (On that subject, I highly recommend the book Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel. Although written back in 1988 it is a great book on a key aspect of company leadership in a fast moving world, even more so today. I have read my own copy often.)

I used Ilford paper and chemicals (especially ID-11) a few times but the local pharmacist used to give me a discount on Kodak stuff so that was my first choice.

I never progressed to colour processing as the temperature control requirements were beyond my capabilities in the fairly primitive environment that I had and, besides, I had started to spend more time and money on electronic projects which I could build in the more pleasant environment of the garage.