More than 60,000 students sitting the 2026 HSC English exams were expecting a difficult essay question, but teachers and pupils said the paper proved unexpectedly manageable and allowed them to adapt prepared responses.
Yvonne Spiers, an English teacher at Strathfield Girls High School, said students had anticipated “a trick” involving an extract from their prescribed text. The uncertainty had also affected staff, with Spiers admitting she had not slept the night before the exam.
Instead, she described the paper as a “gift”, saying the questions were accessible and could be shaped around students’ preparation.
“It was a really good exam,” Spiers said. “The texts were rich and accessible. I think our girls will do it really well.”
The first section required short responses to unseen texts. One question used an extract from Lang Leav’s collection Soon It Will Be Sunday, which discussed a storm battering a manuka tree, and asked students to consider how the writer presented the human quality of resilience.
Serina Surti, a student at Strathfield Girls High, said the question connected with her own experience of beginning the HSC.
“I thought it was very right for this exam. It’s the very beginning [of the HSC] but I am going to get through all of this. I could draw on my own feelings and experiences to answer the question,” she said.
Another unseen-text question asked students to compare attitudes towards success. Stephani Chow, 17, said she wrote that success was not defined by titles or possessions, but by a person’s character and how they felt afterwards.
The 20-mark essay in the second section asked students how the author of their prescribed text had “offered opportunities to examine assumptions about human strength and vulnerability”.
Spiers said pupils who had studied Arthur Miller’s The Crucible were well prepared for the question, which she considered easier than the short-text section.
“The good answer will be that basically The Crucible explores the complexity between the two – there is no such thing as showing strength without having shown vulnerability first,” she said.
Surti said she was able to adapt her prepared essay with confidence. “I liked looking at the essay question and going, ‘You know what? I can do that. Let’s go’.”
Laila Graham, 18, said the questions focused on familiar human experiences and required students to apply techniques and pre-memorised quotations to new material.
“It wasn’t anything out of the blue. It’s just new text, new questions. You’re just applying the techniques, your pre-memorised quotes, and you just go,” she said.
The NSW Education Standards Authority said there had been one significant disruption to exams, after Rosebank College in Five Dock was evacuated about a minute after the English exam began.
Students were out of the exam room for about 20 minutes before returning. They were given the full time to complete the paper and may apply for illness or misadventure.
HSC exams will continue until November 5.
