* $750 for each child in primary school, and
* $1,500 for each child in secondary school

These amounts equate to a maximum tax offset of $375 and $750 respectively. It is a good idea to be aware of this scheme, as parents can now claim for allowable expenses related to their children’s education. Some common allowable expenses include: laptops, desktop computers, education software, school textbooks, trade tools etc. So be sure to keep those receipts, as every dollar spent (up to the limits above) could be worth up to a 50c tax refund for your family.

Eligibility The ETR is available to families receiving the Family Tax Benefit Part A (FTB Part A). The FTB Part A is a separate existing tax benefit which is given by the Family Assistance Office as fortnightly payments to families that meet the Income Test. We won’t go into all the rules regarding qualifying for the FTB Part A, but basically families that have a total family income of less than a certain threshold will receive this tax benefit. In the 08-09 year, this limit was $98,514 (for families with under 18 dependants) or $99,962 for families with some dependants over 18. Add $3,796 to the respective limit for each additional child. So basically if your family income was less than this limit, you would be eligible for the FTB Part A, and hence the ETR (whether you currently receive the FTB is irrelevant, your family just needs to be eligible for it).

Additionally, for the purposes of the ETR, any income in the form of youth allowance, disability support or ABSTUDY (there are a few others) do not count to this limit. So if your family income falls under the threshold for the FTB Part A but for those payments in respect of your child, you’re still eligible for the ETR.

Allowable expenses

Generally, all expenses that (in the words of the federal government) “support a child during school and improve quality of education” are allowable. For example:

* Laptops & home computers and associated costs (including repair and running costs of computer equipment and lease costs), home Internet connection and printers and paper
* Education software
* School textbooks and material (including prescribed textbooks, associated learning materials, study guides and stationery)
* Prescribed trade tools

The list above is not exhaustive, but give you an idea of what are allowable expenses.

Notice that all school textbooks and materials are allowable. For example, you or your child may have purchased HSC textbooks, or prescribed texts for HSC English – claim those! Your family internet connection is also claimable. Just remember to keep your receipts. If you buy claimable goods second hand from private sellers, request a receipt (a simple note noting the goods / service, the price and date will suffice).

However, tuition costs (such as payments to Dux College or other HSC tuition colleges) and school fees are not allowable expenses. Nor are non-education related software such as computer games, or hardware used for such purposes, obviously.

How to claim

The ETR is claimed when parents complete their annual tax return. For those using the e-Tax software, there will be a section for the ETR. Just remember to keep those receipts!

Dux College is a Sydney-based HSC Learning Center specialising in HSC Tutoring Our Chemistry, Physics and Math tuition programs are intensive and results driven, aimed at giving our students the skills to achieve Band 6, and their highest potential UAI.

Find a good HSC tutor and stick with them! Quality tuition providers often have set structures for their courses. For example, at Dux College, we offer a structured schedule, so we make sure all our students cover all topics well ahead of time. This leaves for revision and discussion on optimal exam technique, reinforcement of skills and perfecting overall knowledge. However we find that students who join mid-way through our schedule may have covered some topics we are yet to cover, but have skipped over topics we have already covered. This mismatch in the new student’s knowledge poses a difficulty for them in that they must spend extra effort in catching up with the class.

Our highest achievers are students who have been with us since year 10 or 11, and have gained the fundamental knowledge throughout those early years. Students from this group are generally more adaptive to new concepts as they are introduced, because they have a strong foundation in conceptual understanding, instilled through following our course structure over a longer period of time. It is less common to see spectacular improvements in school rank from year 12 students who join us in the middle of term 3 or 4, because they have not had the same opportunity as most of our other students who have been with us in the long run. However we do see spectacular improvements on school rank from our students who have joined us in year 10 or 11, as the extra tutoring makes a large difference to the bottom line: exam results.

Seek help early! We get the most phone calls from interested students and parents during the weeks after major assessment marks are released back to students. The biggest example is probably at around late April, when year 12 students start to get their half-yearly results back. Some receive a nasty shock at disappointing marks, and feel the sudden compulsion to seek tutoring. Although we are happy to help these students, and we try our very best to bring in and improve students in these situations, we feel that these students would have gained so much more if they found us EARLIER.

Also for the reasons mentioned above, the earlier students find a good tutoring service, the better. HSC tutoring is definitely not something to be left to the final few weeks of major exams and assessments. The benefits are best realised over a longer timeframe, and solid knowledge is built over several terms of tutoring, not merely several weeks. Rome was not built in a day!

Having said that, we do not mean that all students who join us in the middle of their year 12 are not gaining short-term improvements. Our students in this category are very happy with their improvement in marks and general course understanding, within weeks of tutoring. However, we feel that their potential is so much higher. What separates a UAI 99+ student from a UAI 90-95 student is consistency in everything they do. The first step, getting into a routine habit of tutoring and doing higher volumes of more challenging curricular work has a large benefit in itself. Another factor may be the fact that many students simply do not have access to quality teachers in their school environment, which is supplemented by finding a reliable tutoring service. However, in order to wholly move into a higher level of achievement (say, aiming to Dux your grade, or attain a 99+)

Short-term tutoring Some students feel the need to seek tutoring services for certain topics out of a subject, then leave after those topics are covered. In these situations, we recommend finding a private tutor. Sometimes students and parents do not appreciate the degree of interconnectedness between topics within any one HSC subject. For example, HSC science subjects like Physics or Chemistry are very conceptual in nature.

If a student is having trouble understanding the concepts in a later topic, chances are they have gaps in their fundamental conceptual understanding. For courses like HSC mathematics, particularly the more difficult Extension 1 and Extension 2 courses, an imperfect understanding of one topic is indicative of faults in conceptual understanding in other areas of the course. For example, in Extension 2, almost all of the topics are linked to each other, and to topics in Extension 1 and even 2 unit.

Students who feel they need tutoring specific to certain topics run the risk of being overconfident in their abilities as a whole. We recommend taking a deeper approach in remedying ‘holes’ in understanding, by investigating all related and associated topics and concepts. This can not happen in the short while available in covering just one topic, but rather over a longer period where the class can cover several topics. This allows enough time to fully explore how individual topics are interconnected. A common prerequisite of a band 6 responses (when HSC markers gather to determine the band cutoff criteria) often draws upon the degree to which students display an understanding of how different topics relate to and interact with each other. For these reasons, we do not recommend students seek out tutoring help intermittently.

Ideally, students should identify early on which subjects they feel they need long-term support (outside of the normal school support, which in many cases is quite minimal) and seek a quality tuition service early on in their course, preferably before year 12 begins. Remember, consistency is the key!

TIP 1: Know the syllabus Knowing the syllabus very important. Firstly, all HSC science exams can only test you on content within the syllabus. Most of the time, HSC exam questions will simply be a syllabus dot-point that has been reworded.

For example, an actual HSC Chemistry syllabus dot-point is “Describe hydrogen bonding between molecules”. A corresponding exam question can ask something simple like “Describe hydrogen bonding between water molecules”. Alternatively, exam questions can be slightly more complicated, for example: “Identify a compound that exhibits strong hydrogen bonding and descbribe how hydrogen bonding affects its melting and boiling temperatures”. However in both cases, the question can be reduced to simply describing your knowledge of how hydrogen bonding works as between molecules, and how this phenomenon affects some of the chemical’s physical propertie(s).

If you have an excellent understanding of the syllabus and have covered in detail each dot-point, you will know enough to get a Band 6. We emphasise the fact that exams can only test you on what is in the syllabus. If you ever don’t understand a concept because it has been poorly explained to you at school, or the concept is very difficult, ask your teacher whether it is in the syllabus. If it is not, understand that it will not be examined, so don’t worry too much about not fully understanding that concept. However, if a concept is within the syllabus, or required by one of the dot-points as background information, you should know it well.

TIP 2: Know what’s important for practicals / experiments HSC Sciences’ syllabi contains many dot-points requiring students to “conduct a first-hand investigation”, or “gather data from a first-hand investigation”. These dot-points are responsible for the regular experiments you conduct at school. It is very important that you do not neglect the information presented to you during one of those experiment classes at school. Many students think of experiments as fun (and they are), but they ignore the fact that each experiment deals with at least one dot-point in the syllabus, sometimes several at once.

The things you need to know in ALL experiments are:

1. The scientific principle being tested / used (for example, an experiment to demonstrate Newton’s second law requires you to firstly understand the formula F=ma and how to use it in calculations)
2. The correct procedure. A very important example is in titrations, where washing procedures will sometimes be tested in exam questions (E.g. “Explain what is a primary standard”, or “Explain the need to finally rinse a pipette with the solution it is to contain, before using it”)
3. Safety issues / appropriate precautions. For example, when doing a flame test, never burn lead compounds. Or when burning magnesium, use tongs and don’t stare into the flame. (Other examples include: know which metals / chemicals are toxic, when goggles and gloves are required, how to deal with fires / flames etc)
4. Sources of error: this last one is important because many HSC exam questions may ask you to talk about the sources of errors in experiments you should have done at school. For example, “Identify three sources of error in this experiment, and suggest ways to minimise their effect on your results.”

The important thing to remember here is to pay attention in school during experiment classes, and not to ignore these dot-points during your study and revision.

TIP 3: Understand the concepts We do not recommend trying to memorise too many things. HSC sciences cannot be mastered through memorisation, and all of the top students who achieve a HSC mark of >95 genuinely understand the concepts in their subject.

Understanding the concept is very important to succeeding in HSC sciences. Before an exam, there is no way you can predict what specific questions will be asked of you. You will only know that everything tested will be in the syllabus, but the specific wording of your questions can catch you offguard.

If you rely on memorisation of the course content, you are inflexible. A question that is slightly unorthodox in approach or worded in an unfamiliar way will catch you offguard, and you will run the risk of losing easy marks. However, if you genuinely understand the concepts involved, you can always derive the answer in the spot, even if the question is worded in an unfamiliar way, or requires unorthodox thinking. This way, you are a flexible student, and no matter how the exam is set, you will get a high mark reflecting your good ability.

There are certain situations where memorisation is appropriate. Generally, these are:

1. Remembering topics for the long essay-type questions. E.g. in HSC Physics, it is a good idea to come up with a list of points regarding the pros and cons of AC versus DC. A common exam question may be “Discuss” or “Compare and evaluate” or “Assess the impact on society of the development of AC electricity”. To tackle these quesitons, it is a good idea to try to memorise a short list of words or phrases which remind you of a general topic to argue, in favour of either side (AC vs DC).
2. Some facts have no pattern, so it is useful to memorise them. HSC Chemistry is a good example of this. Good students memorise all of the composite ions, their molecular formulae and their valencies through gaining experience in the course. Another example would be memorising certain definitional bodies of knowledge, like Newton’s laws.
3. Memorise the simple equations. This is highly important, and will save you much time and grief during an exam. Although a formula sheet is provided to you for HSC sciences, it is a good idea to memorise the simple equations or formulae, as always flicking towards the back of your exam paper wastes valuable seconds each time. Also by memorising the simple equations, you are less likely to make calculation errors than blindly copying out the formulae from the data sheet everytime.

But always strive to understand the underlying concept, as it will benefit you in the long run.

TIP 4: Make good use of the resources available to you What we mean by this is, for example:

1. Whenever you have a question, ask your teacher!
2. Whenever you don’t understand a concept fully and completely, ask your teacher until you understand!
3. Work with other bright students who are keen on doing well in the HSC. Share notes with them.

Most teachers will answer any question a student asks them, as they will be happy to know that their students are so dedicated to doing well. After all, the satisfaction of seeing their students succeed is one of the main reasons why teachers choose this profession! However not every student has access to teachers that are willing and happy to answer many questions or explain concepts at length. In this case, there may be other resources available to you. For example, find good tutoring and ask the teachers there!

Another thing to keep in mind is making your own syllabus dot-point summaries. Synthesise and gather all your knowledge, summarise it and write it onto paper. It is a good idea to submit your notes for review by your class teacher (or after-school tutor) to make sure your knowledge of the course is comprehensive. Going this far may seen daunting, but remember that high marks can only come with hard work.

Conclusion Our top 3 tips for succeeding in HSC sciences are:

1. Know the syllabus like the back of your hand!
2. Know what to study for when it comes to the experiment dot-points
3. Make sure you understand the concepts involved in your subject. Do not rely on memorisation, unless it’s the only way

Following this general advice will improve most students’ approach to HSC sciences, as these are the main shortcomings of most HSC science students of today.