Just after 5am this morning, I went for a jog around our local park to keep my daughter company. She’s in year 12, and those big end-of-year external exams are looming. 

So I jogged, while she marched the park’s perimeter reciting formulas or quotes or something else that will be largely irrelevant once the exam has been handed in, and Schoolies’ Week begins.

 It’s almost impossible, as a parent, to convince many of our children that those ATAR exams - which provide universities with a rank to make tertiary offers - are just a tiny turn in life’s journey.

But they are. They do not determine whether our children have the ability to lead others, or whether they have the confidence to walk into a room and hold court. Rote learning doesn’t make our children team players, prove they are good listeners, or teach them the value of forgiveness.

Ironically, skills like empathy and communication, teamwork and time-management, are termed ‘soft-skills’. But they are the attributes that will determine - post-school - whether someone is a good leader, far more than the ability to recall and scribble facts and figures with a clock ticking.

It’s a good reminder for our children in high school. And for us, as we sit on the sidelines and watch.

I’ve done thousands of interviews with teenagers in my research. And it points to our teens having never been more anxious. School refusal, eating disorders and a host of other mental health issues are all on the rise. I truly believe that, sometimes, lying on the trampoline and looking up at the stars might be the perfect homework.

In 30 years in journalism, I’ve interviewed a dozen prime ministers and presidents, and those in the big offices at multi-nationals the world over - and never had reason to ask their ATAR, or its equivalent.

That’s because working hard, persevering, understanding others - those soft-skills - will, once the last school bell rings, determine their readiness to write their own story.

Good luck to them all. And to us, their parents.

Madonna King, Chair