Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
A teenager who underwent brain surgery after accidentally falling 20 metres off a cliff was denied illness and misadventure provisions in the HSC because his surgery did not occur “on the day of his exam”.
Now 18-year-old Connor Meldrum and his parents are on a mission to make the NSW Education Standards Authority more compassionate when they decide if students with a disability or a serious illness can have a HSC qualification.
Connor’s mother Kim Goodrick has been in a bureaucratic battle for over a year and will on Wednesday take civil action in a bid to make the process fairer in future, taking her fight to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
“We just want NESA to admit that they were wrong and hope they change their systems,” she said. “It started just about Connor, it has changed now to being about all kids in NSW who have adverse illness and misadventure and it has to be done on a case-by-case basis … The rules just don’t make sense.”
Their fight with the authority started after Connor fell 20 metres down a cliff at Byron Bay in March of 2019. fter waking up in hospital, doctors said Connor had significant damage to the part of his brain which processed language and he had to begin the arduous task of learning how to speak English and write again. A year later, he had managed to do that and more and by the end of 2020 he was also studying Italian Extension and making good progress in Biology and Mathematics Advanced in the HSC. But a life-threatening staphylococcus infection in January of 2021 meant he had to undergo surgery that month and he did not complete his other two subjects. When he came back to school, much of his skull had been removed, he walked between classes carrying an IV drip with antibiotics and had debilitating headaches due to the pressure on his brain. He had another brain operation in August. Connor underwent a life-threatening staphylococcus infection and two brain surgeries in Year 12 but was refused any Illness and Misadventure considerations by NESA for time lost from teaching and learning,” Ms Goodrick said in a letter to NESA Chief Paul Martin earlier this year.
Ms Goodrick had made earlier inquiries asking for leniency but she said they refused because his “brain surgery did not happen on the day of the final HSC examination.” Connor completed a total of 62.5 per cent of the HSC requirements in three courses but he did not meet NESA requirements that students complete “in excess of 50 per cent of each course”. This year, he repeated Year 12 and completed the other two subjects — which his parents said was particularly difficult while students in Sydney who lost learning time due to lockdowns were given the exact considerations they requested. ESA chief Paul Martin replied and said it was the responsibility of Connor’s school, Trinity Catholic College in Lismore, to address the missed time off class and that the special consideration for Covid was “to support an unprecedented global pandemic with very specific intent, criteria and calculations.” A NESA spokeswoman said: “NESA has worked with the school to provide Connor with appropriate disability provisions to ensure he could access the HSC exams in both 2021 and 2022.”
