We found ourselves at the kitchen table on a Tuesday afternoon, my daughter and I, staring at a piece of paper with three subjects written on it: Biology, Maths, and English. She was fifteen, hoping to skip ahead a year in her distance education program, and we had just been told that she would need to demonstrate Year 12 level knowledge in those three subjects to make the move. The woman on the phone made it sound simple. “Just find the resources and work through them,” she said. We had no idea where to start.
The first instinct was to panic. I remember opening my laptop and typing “Year 12 biology resources” into a search engine, only to be met with thousands of results. Some were paid courses with slick advertisements. Others were YouTube videos that promised everything and delivered very little. My daughter just looked at me, and I could tell she was already losing confidence. That moment—the overwhelm of infinite choice—was almost worse than the actual task.
We needed to get practical fast. So we did the most obvious thing first: we went to the curriculum documents themselves. Every state and exam board publishes a syllabus or specification that tells you exactly what content is covered. It’s not a secret. It’s a PDF. But somehow, in the noise of online resources, that feels like the last place people think to look. We printed out the biology syllabus, the maths syllabus, and the English syllabus, and we stuck them on the fridge. That gave us a map. Without a map, every resource is just an island.
From there, we started looking for resources that aligned with those specific syllabuses. That turned out to be the key. Khan Academy became our best friend for maths. It didn’t matter that it was designed for the American system—the underlying concepts were the same. My daughter worked through the algebra and calculus sections at her own pace, pausing and rewinding as many times as she needed. She told me it felt less embarrassing than asking a tutor to repeat something. That’s a real thing for teenagers. The computer doesn’t judge.
For biology, we found a mix of resources. There were excellent YouTube channels like Amoeba Sisters and Crash Course, but they were too broad for exam-level detail. So we paired those with a textbook. Not the latest edition—a secondhand copy of an older version we got for five dollars from a library sale. The core content doesn’t change as fast as the publishers want you to think. The syllabus told us which chapters mattered, and we worked through those. When we hit a tricky concept, we’d search for a specific video or a PDF explanation. But the textbook gave us the depth we needed.
English was trickier. There’s no list of formulas to memorise. But the syllabus told us what skills were assessed: close reading, essay structure, text analysis, and comparison. For that, we used past papers. That’s the resource nobody should underestimate. Exam boards almost always release previous papers and even sample answers. They are free, they are accurate, and they show exactly what the markers are looking for. My daughter found it frustrating at first—she was used to writing creative pieces, not analytical essays. But once we spent a week looking at the structure of high-scoring responses, she started to get it. She would write a practice paragraph, then we’d compare it to the sample answer. Not to copy, but to see where her argument could go deeper.
What surprised me most was that the best resources weren’t always online. There was a local teacher’s supply shop that sold old revision guides for a few dollars. There were library databases we could access for free with a library card, which had journals and articles that helped with English. And there was my friend who is a secondary school teacher, who gave us a list of websites she uses with her own Year 12 students. That personal connection mattered. A quick email to someone who does this every day saved us weeks of guessing.
We also discovered the value of routine. Resources don’t work if you use them randomly. We set aside two hours each afternoon after school. My daughter would rotate through the three subjects, using a timer so she didn’t spend all her time on the one she liked best. It wasn’t always graceful. Some afternoons she’d put her head down on the table and say she couldn’t keep going. On those days, we didn’t push. We went for a walk or cooked dinner together. That break was as much a resource as any textbook, because the next day she’d come back sharp.
One thing I’d want other parents to know: you don’t have to be an expert in the subject to support your child. I know no maths beyond basic arithmetic, and I certainly can’t explain cellular respiration. But I could help my daughter find the resources, set up a schedule, and—most importantly—listen when she explained what she was learning. That act of explaining, even to someone who barely understands, helps solidify knowledge. She’d draw diagrams for me on scrap paper, and I’d ask questions. Sometimes she’d get annoyed, but other times she’d say, “Oh, I see it now,” because describing it out loud made her see it too.
We did eventually pay for a small amount of tutoring, but not for regular weekly sessions. We booked three one-off hour-long sessions—one per subject—where the tutor could look at my daughter’s practice work and point out gaps. That felt like a smarter use of money than ongoing lessons. The tutor gave us a list of specific things to work on, and then we went back to the resources we already had. It was like a diagnostic rather than a treatment.
Now, a few months in, I can’t say it’s been smooth. There are still bad days. The syllabus on the fridge is covered in pencil marks, but some topics are still grey areas. My daughter’s confidence comes and goes in waves. Last week, she scored poorly on a practice maths test and threw her pen across the room. I didn’t try to cheer her up with a big speech. I just picked up the pen and said, “Let’s find the question you got wrong and see what happened.” We did that, and it turned out she’d mis-read the problem. That was a lesson in itself: knowing how to recover is as important as knowing the content.
What remains uncertain is whether all this will be enough by the test date. There’s no guarantee. But I do know that she’s learned more than just the subjects. She’s learned that a big goal can be broken into chunks, that there are resources everywhere if you look with a syllabus in your hand, and that a laptop and a library card can get you a long way. Whether she actually reaches Year 12 knowledge by spring, I can’t say. But she’s a lot closer than she was that Tuesday afternoon, and she’s realised she can do hard things. That might be the most valuable resource of all.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » We found ourselves at the kitchen table on a Tuesday afternoon, my daughter and I, staring at a piece of paper with three subjects written on it: Biology, Maths, and English