Illness and misadventure provisions exist to support students when their performance in a Year 10, preliminary or higher school certificate assessment task is affected by circumstances beyond their control. As assessment tasks are intended to be a measure of a student's actual task performance, applications must relate to illness or misadventure suffered immediately before or during the task that has affected the student's performance in the task.
Applications may be in respect of:
- Illness or injury, that is, illness or physical injuries suffered directly by the student which affects the student's performance in the task. For example influenza and stomach virus.
- Misadventure, that is, any other event beyond the student's control which affects the student's performance in the task (for example the recent death of a family member or friend, or an exceptional circumstance).
Holidays, routine medical or dental appointments, driving tests, part-time work commitments and routine sporting commitments are examples of grounds likely to be unsuccessful when applying for illness and misadventure.
The school's illness and misadventure procedures aim to replicate the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) Higher School Certificate process. NESA will not uphold an Illness and misadventure application if the reason for your absence is not considered to be sufficiently serious.
The school does not expect you to attend school to complete or submit an assessment task against specific medical advice. If you cannot attend school because of illness or misadventure, you must follow the school's illness and misadventure procedures.
All applications must be submitted on an illness and misadventure application form.
When completing an illness and misadventure application form, you should pay close attention to the instructions and complete all relevant sections. Submitting an incomplete form could jeopardise the success of your application.
It is very important to provide evidence of illness of misadventure (PDF 402KB) with your application. If possible, this should be from an independent source (that is, the person providing the evidence is not related to you in any way and is not a friend or work colleague of your parents). You should seek evidence on the same day, either immediately before or after each assessment task for which you are applying. The documentation you provide must be current, specific to the date and time of the assessment task, and submitted with the application form.
A medical certificate is always required to support an illness and misadventure Application due to illness.
A medical certificate that merely states you were unfit for work and study is unacceptable.
The medical certificate must be completed by a medical practitioner registered with the Australian Health Practitioner Registration Agency (AHPRA).
The medical certificate must include:
- diagnosis of medical condition
- date of onset of illness
- date(s) and time(s) of all consultations / meetings relating to this illness
- description of how your condition / symptoms could affect your assessment task performance
If you are absent on the day of an assessment task or on the day an assessment task is to be submitted, the doctor must certify that you are medically unfit to sit for the assessment task or attend school.
The medical practitioner may choose to include these mandatory items on their own medical certificate, or instead complete page 2 of the Girraween High School illness and misadventure application form.
Medical certificates obtained after the event will not be accepted.