If you are a parent of a child in Year 3, 5, 7 or 9, you have probably already opened one this week, or you are about to.

And if your stomach does a small drop when you see it, you are not alone, and you are not overreacting. We are wired to read a report like a verdict. It looks official, has your child’s name on it, and compares them to a national average.

Of course it feels like it means something big.

Here is the thing to pause and consider before you open the next one: a NAPLAN report is a snapshot, not a sentence.

It tells you how your child performed on a set of literacy and numeracy tasks, on one day, in one testing window.

However, it does not tell you whether they are kind, have great time management or collaboration skills, speak up for their mates, persist and have grit, or had a terrible night’s sleep and missed breakfast that morning.

And, it definitely can’t tell you whether they will find work they are both interested in, good at, and keen to master.

It does not tell you whether they will be the kind of adult who shows up for people, reaches out to others to learn from, seek out feedback to grow, or solves problems nobody else wants to touch.

NAPLAN was never designed to measure any of that, and it can’t.

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The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which runs NAPLAN, does not recommend coaching or drilling for the test, and educators are consistently clear that framing it as high-stakes is what creates most of the anxiety around it, for kids and for parents.

While working in schools as a teacher and assistant principal, my aim was to always make the days feel as normal as possible - for teachers and students. We spoke about trusting what we do in usual day-to-day work and engaged with parents (and teachers) to support decisions around adjustments, engagement, needs, and help required.

Managing expectations is a key aspect when it comes to NAPLAN. The pressure a lot of families feel around NAPLAN season does not usually come from the test itself. Like too many assessments, it comes from the meaning we layer on top of it.

That matters, because kids pick up on that meaning fast. If the question waiting for them at home is “how did you go?”, asked in a certain tone, they hear “did you perform?”. If the question is “how did it feel, and did you try your best?”, they hear something different: that their effort and their experience matter more than a band number.

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Some Possible Reframes Worth Trying

Ask about the experience before you ask about the results.

What was the room like? Was there a question that surprised them? Did they feel ready? These questions treat your child as a person having an experience, not a data point being generated.

Remember what the number can’t see. A child could be working two bands below the national average in numeracy and be the one who organises the whole friend group, notices when someone is left out, and never gives up on a problem until it’s solved. None of that shows up in a NAPLAN band, and none of it matters less because of that.

Use the report as information, not identity. If a result flags an area to strengthen, that’s genuinely useful, the same way it would be useful to know a plant needs more water.

It’s one data point, from the beginning of this year, that could help you start a conversation with their teacher, but it isn’t a label for your child.

Talk about your own school experience honestly.

Plenty of us grew up in systems that made a single test feel like the whole story. If you catch yourself reacting to your child’s report the way you once reacted to your own, that’s worth naming out loud, even just to yourself. Kids often absorb our unspoken beliefs about scores more than our stated ones. (I’m fairly certain one year I rebelled against my parents and did a mixture of ACDC to show my patriotism).

If your child does ask you directly whether their result is “good” or “bad”, it is worth telling them the truth: it’s neither. It’s just where they were on one test, on that one day in March. What really matters is what happens next: how they choose to show up or engage in learning, explore interests, build a life that fits who they are, and put in real effort. Only they know when they are putting in high amounts.

That is the actual story worth focusing on and telling. The band on the page is just a footnote.

No one score predicts a good life.

Your child’s NAPLAN envelope is not evidence to the contrary. It’s just an envelope.

Dan

More Than a Score Co-Host

If this resonated and you’re someone interested in redefining success and helping young people, subscribe to More Than a Score.

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It’s free, and you’ll receive each resource, article, and podcast episode straight to your inbox every fortnight. If you know someone who needs to read this, share it with them.

More Than a Score - we are Dan and Laura, award-winning educators and parents behind the podcast, newsletter, and resources. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, and find more at muchmorethanascore.com.

After leaving Year 12 disappointed with a score that didn't reflect what he was capable of, Adam made the courageous decision to repeat his final year. Looking back, it wasn't simply a higher score that changed his future. It was finding a school community where he felt seen, supported and challenged to believe in himself.

Today, Adam is a teacher, educational leader, instructional coach, father of two and musician. Every day, he works alongside teachers to create the kind of classrooms he once needed as a teenager. Places where relationships come before results and young people are encouraged to grow, not simply perform.

In this thoughtful and deeply practical conversation, Adam shares what helped him move from feeling unseen to helping others belong, why repeating Year 12 became one of the best decisions he ever made, and how parents can focus less on outcomes and more on the habits, relationships and mindset that set young people up for life.

Whether you're raising a child navigating school, supporting a teenager through exams, or simply wondering how to encourage confidence without adding pressure, this episode is full of reassurance, perspective and practical wisdom. Because your child's future is never defined by one score. It is shaped by the people who believe in them along the way.

What You'll Discover:

• Why Adam chose to repeat Year 12 and how that decision changed the direction of his life.

• The surprising difference one supportive school community can make in a young person's confidence, wellbeing and achievement.

• Why feeling seen is one of the most powerful ingredients for helping children thrive.

• How the combination of high support and high challenge helps young people build confidence and resilience.

• Why effort, growth and relationships matter far more than chasing perfect grades. • Practical ways parents can help their children navigate setbacks and build confidence when things don't go to plan.

• Why a school result is simply a snapshot in time, not a measure of your child's potential.

• Adam's powerful concept of replacing a traditional to do list with a to be list to define success by the person you're becoming, not just the achievements you're collecting.

• Lessons from Adam's experiences as a teacher, educational leader and father that every parent can apply at home.

More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning assistant leader, on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. New episodes fortnightly. Subscribe to follow along here or at muchmorethanascore.com

Subject selection season is here.

Year 10 students are being asked to choose what they’ll study in Year 11 and 12. Current Year 11s are locking in their Unit 3 and 4 sequences for next year. Forms are due, information nights are booked into family calendars, and, in a lot of homes, the kitchen table has quietly turned into a boardroom.

It’s here where a fifteen-or sixteen-year-old is being asked to make what feels like a five-year strategic decision about their entire future.

That is too much weight to put on a subject selection form.

We understand why it happens. With more than ninety subjects on offer in Victoria alone, and equivalent complexity in every other state’s senior curriculum, the choice can look less like an opportunity and more like a maze. Add in whispers about which subjects “scale” better for an ATAR, and it is easy to see how a conversation about what a teenager finds interesting turns into a conversation about which combination of subjects will maximise a number.

Here is what we would want every parent to know walking into Term 3

Subject selection is not as irreversible as it feels. Most schools build genuine flexibility into Year 11, treating it as a testing ground rather than a locked-in pathway.

If a subject turns out to be the wrong fit, whether that’s because the workload is unsustainable, the content doesn’t click, or your child’s interests have simply shifted, there is very often room to change course before the high-stakes Unit 3 and 4 sequence begins.

The form your child fills in this term is a strong first guess, not a contract.

The data no longer supports “one right path.” In Victoria’s most recent VCE cohort, a record number of students completed their senior schooling, and a meaningful share of them chose the VCE Vocational Major or the Victorian Pathways Certificate rather than an ATAR-scored pathway altogether.

These are not consolation options. They are legitimate, increasingly common routes into further study, apprenticeships and work.

At the same time, current Australian labour market data shows that roughly half of advertised jobs call for a vocational qualification, compared with around forty percent asking for a bachelor’s degree.

If you are picturing your child’s future as a single ladder with university at the top and everything else below it, the actual jobs market no longer looks like that.

Interest and workload sustainability matter more than “scaling.” A subject a young person genuinely wants to show up for, that they can sustain across two demanding years without burning out, will generally serve them better than a subject chosen purely because someone told them it scales well against other subjects.

Ask your child what they are curious about, what they lost track of time doing, what class discussion they went home still thinking about. That is far more useful data than a scaling table.

Your job this term is to lower the stakes, not raise them. Teenagers absorb pressure from the adults around them more than from the curriculum itself. If subject selection becomes the topic of every dinner conversation for a fortnight, your child will learn that this decision defines them, whether or not you ever say those words directly.

A calmer frame, “let’s look at a few options together, and remember we can adjust next year if we need to”, does more good than any spreadsheet of ATAR scaling data. Opening up that valve to release some pressure can do wonders.

Loop in the people whose job this actually is. Careers counsellors and subject coordinators see hundreds of these decisions every year and have a much clearer, less emotionally loaded view of what flexibility genuinely exists at your specific school. A short conversation with them can do more to settle a family’s nerves (particularly parents’) than weeks of googling.

The subject selection form your child fills in over the next few weeks can be a genuinely useful planning tool, but it isn’t a prophecy.

There is no single combination of subjects that determines whether a fifteen-year-old goes on to build a life they love and, unfortunately, can’t guarantee success or that everything will work out.

There are, as there have always been, many paths, and more of them are opening up, not closing down.

Dan

More Than a Score Co-Host

If this resonated and you’re someone interested in redefining success and helping young people, subscribe to More Than a Score.

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It’s free, and you’ll receive each resource, article, and podcast episode straight to your inbox every fortnight. If you know someone who needs to read this, share it with them.

More Than a Score - we are Dan and Laura, award-winning educators and parents behind the podcast, newsletter, and resources. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, and find more at muchmorethanascore.com.

In this episode of More Than a Score, we sit down with Odette Barry, PR and media relations founder, community builder, and a self-described former professional nightmare.

Odette grew up in an affluent Melbourne community with two high-achieving older sisters and parents who valued education above almost everything and invested dearly for hers. She struggled with authority, could not sit still, and collected report cards that told her, year after year, that she was failing. She left school with an ATAR score of around 56 and a core belief that she had let everyone down.

What came next was anything but a straight line. Odette found her first real sense of worth blending drinks at Boost Juice, where the noise, the systems and the fun finally fit the way her brain worked.

She married at twenty-one, became a mum at twenty-two, worked at Westpac while raising her son, ran a fashion side-business, and started university for the first time at twenty-six after one encouraging boss told her she could.

Today she runs Odette and Co, a Byron Bay agency helping not-for-profits and social change-makers challenge the status quo, the very skill school kept trying to stamp out of her. This conversation explores non-linear career paths, using your unique gifts, ADHD and the way different brains learn, self-doubt and confidence, self-compassion, and what it takes to parent a child who is nothing like you.

Odette is honest that the damage school did was real and lasting, and just as honest about what turned it around: being seen by the right people, being given agency, and slowly learning to trust herself. For parents, it is a reminder that the kid who questions everything is not a problem to fix.

For students, it is proof that a low score is a moment, not a measure of who you are. And for anyone staring down a changing job market and the rise of AI, Odette offers a clear-eyed, generous view of the human skills that will always matter.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why the traits school punished, challenging authority and questioning everything, became the core of Odette's career

• How report cards that said "failed" hardened into a core belief, and how long it took to undo

• Why Boost Juice, not school, was the first place she felt she had real value

• How a mentor named Steve Browning changed her path just by listening and telling her she could do more

• The reframe from her mother-in-law about a "neurological rewiring" that lifted years of guilt

• How she rebuilt her confidence, and why she still calls the confident version of herself a mask

• Why being a young mum was the best decision she ever made, despite the judgement

• The three ideas that shaped how she parents a son who is nothing like her

• Why she now sees learning outside the classroom as a genuine life force

• What she looks for when she hires young people, and the story of the candidate who would not take no

• An honest, practical message for parents about helping kids into the workforce in the age of AI

More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning assistant leader, on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. New episodes fortnightly. Subscribe to follow along here or at muchmorethanascore.com

Courses handbooks and information will come out, an online selection portal will open, and your fifteen or sixteen year old will sit down to choose the subjects that will carry them into their final years of school.

To them, and very often to us, the moment feels enormous, as though a wrong tick in a box now will close a door that can never be opened again.

You can see it in the way the conversation tightens, the way "what do you actually like" so quickly becomes "but what will keep your options open", frenzied thinking of friends’ selections, and the way a teenager who five minutes ago was excited about a subject suddenly looks unsure whether they are allowed to want it.

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This is one of the moments we find ourselves talking about most on More Than a Score. because subject selection is where the pressure of the scoreboard reaches down into a child years before any final result, and quietly starts shaping the choices they make.

The fear or worry in the room is rarely about the subjects themselves.

It is often about the future, and a particular story we have all absorbed about how the future is supposed to work, that there is one correct sequence or path…with the right subjects leading to the right score leading to the right course leading to the settled life. And, lo and behold, that single misstep early on knocks a young person off the track for good - no way back, ever.

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Held tightly enough, that story turns a moment that should be about curiosity and discovery into a defensive exercise in not closing doors, and a teenager learns to choose from fear rather than from interest, strengths or emerging talent.

It is worth saying plainly that the story is mostly not true, and the evidence keeps confirming it.

The single number we treat as the gateway to everything turns out to be far less of a gateway than the pressure suggests. Reporting from The Conversation on admissions data has found that around 30 per cent of Year 12 students who go on to university are admitted without their ATAR even being considered.

For the many who take a less direct route, enabling and bridging courses are a real and growing door into a degree, and the students who walk through them do just as well once they are there. (If they decide to pursue study at a university rather than an apprenticeship or moving directly into full-time work initially).

None of this means the choices do not matter.

But, maybe it means they matter far less catastrophically than the fear insists, and a young person choosing subjects this month is not sealing their fate.

They are simply picking a starting direction on a road with more turn offs than anyone admits. Especially given the current state of change and uncertainty we are all facing with all the potential, hype and evolution of AI.

So, what can we do now?

As you’re sitting at the kitchen table over the coming weeks, there may be a better question to try out. One the people we speak to on the podcast keep pointing back to.

Not "what keeps the most doors open", but "what does this person lean towards when no one is making them".

The answer is usually visible if you watch for it, in the subject they talk about without being asked, the thing they lose track of time doing, the area where the effort seems to fall away.

Blaise Witnish, who runs a global company with more 2500 employees now (with a wide majority between 18-25), spoke to us about how rarely young people seem to actually know what they are good at. Not because the strength is hidden but because the ease of it can disguise its power.

The thing that comes naturally sometimes may not feel like a strength from the inside, because we just use or do it without thinking. This is exactly why a young person needs a trusted mentor or adult to notice it and name it out loud.

Subject selection time is one of the cleanest chances a parent gets to do precisely that. It's a brilliant opportunity to hold up what you have seen in your young person and let the choices have some further information to help them.

It helps, too, to remember that the path almost never runs in the straight line the fear imagines.

Athan Didaskalou’s (co-founder of the highly successful company July) great insights were about running your own game, refusing to measure yourself against a scoreboard someone else set, and trusting that a wobbly or unusual start can be seen as side street rather than a dead end.

As you and those around you begin discussing selecting subjects, hold these perspectives alongside that subject form and the form shrinks back to a more realistic size. Yes, it is a meaningful choice, worth making thoughtfully, but it is the first of dozens, and certainly not a guarantee of anything.

After all, we are much more than a score and a set of subjects.

Dan

More Than a Score Co-Founder & Co-Host

P.S

If this brought a particular young person to mind, the one staring down a subject form as though it decides everything, the kindest thing you can do is send it to the parent walking through it with them.

And if it reached you because someone cared enough to pass it on, you can subscribe to More Than a Score and get our next free podcast conversation, article and resource straight into you.

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If your teenager is unsure what comes next, this episode is reassurance that confidence usually comes after action, not before. It is for parents supporting a young person through big decisions.

What if the right path only becomes clear once you stop chasing it? Athan Didaskalou, founder of the Australian luggage brand July, talks honestly about his uneasy relationship with school, the uncertainty he felt early on, and how curiosity and hands-on experience mattered more than perfect results.

His story is a reminder that there is no single right pathway after school, that skills are built through experience rather than qualifications alone, and that one result never defines future potential.

For any parent supporting exploration without pressure, or any young person rethinking their direction, this conversation offers a grounded, generous perspective. Success is built over time.

In this episode, you’ll discover and learn:

• Navigating uncertainty after school with no clear plan

• Why confidence comes after action, not before

• Building skills through experience rather than qualifications

• How parents can support exploration without pressure

• Why success looks different at every life stage

Because school is only one chapter, and success is built over time.

More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning school leader based on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Each week, we share honest stories about school, ATAR pressure, career pathways, parenting teenagers, and what success really means after school. New episodes weekly. Subscribe to follow along.

There is a moment Athan Didaskalou had almost forgotten until we asked him about it.

He was seventeen, a media assignment was due, and his laptop had just failed. A teacher looked at him and said the plainest possible thing, “I have to fail you”.

Athan walked to the school bathrooms and stood there with what he now knew was an anxiety attack, certain he had wasted something he could never get back.

For years afterwards, the score he finished Year 12 with was a sore point his family simply stopped mentioning. It was the first thing he told us when we sat down together, and it is worth sitting with, because most of us recognise that feeling even if the details differ.

Here is the part that matters: The boy in that bathroom went on to run a charcoal chicken shop, study marketing at RMIT, spend five years at one of the country’s biggest advertising agencies, build Australia’s largest online coffee retailer almost by accident, start a co-working space, and then co-found July, the luggage brand, the week after his first child was born and about a year before a pandemic shut down travel worldwide.

None of it was planned in a straight line.

When we asked him how he kept moving, he reached for an image anyone who has driven in Melbourne will understand. You can sit on the main road on the right path and go nowhere, he said, or you can take the side streets. It might take twice as long, but you are moving, and you feel like you are getting somewhere.

The idea that runs through everything Athan said is deceptively simple. Stop measuring yourself against a scoreboard someone else set, and start running your own game. He traces it back, with real honesty, to the first time he was ever ranked.

For most young people, Year 12 is exactly that: the first time a number gets attached to your name and you are sorted against everyone else.

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Unless you grew up doing competitive sport, you have probably never been ranked before, and you are certainly not ready for how it feels.

Athan’s response, once he understood it, was to choose a life that could not be neatly compared. The clearest example he gave us was almost funny in its smallness. He does not own a car. He has ridden the same Vespa scooter for nearly twenty years, because it never costs much, it always looks good, and there is simply no one to measure himself against. No Volkswagen, no Land Rover, no benchmark. Just his own game.

What gives this its weight is that running your own game is not the same as opting out.

Athan is one of the most hands-on people you could meet, and when we asked what skill has mattered most across all those ventures, he did not hesitate…”Get your hands dirty.” He learned more from a year of work experience folded into his degree than from anything theoretical, and it is the first thing he looks for in anyone he hires now.

For a young person who feels stuck in classrooms reading about the world rather than touching it, his advice is unglamorous and completely doable. Carve out the time, and then ask. Volunteer somewhere. Take on a small project. Send the email. He is living proof of the last one, because a single message is how a well-known guest ended up on a podcast like ours.

As we often say in my family, it is always no unless you ask. You are guaranteed to miss every shot you never take. Right?

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There was a thread that surprised us, and it is one parents will want to hear.

Athan is quietly brilliant at selling, and he means something very particular by that word.

Not the pushy kind, not the loud kind he failed at in a Microsoft interview years ago, but the ability to tell someone clearly and warmly why an idea is worth their time. Selling, in his hands, is really just storytelling and connection. It is a skill you can build anywhere, and it is one schools rarely name out loud, even though it shapes whether a young person can walk into a room and make their case for themselves.

If the conversation had a turn, a point where it moved from the sting of a score toward something gentler, it came when Athan talked about his parents.

He was never judged for any of the strange, risky things he tried. The support was not loud or full of praise; it was something steadier, a refusal to criticise, a willingness to stay curious, and a quiet habit of making the time and connecting him to the right person.

He told us about ringing his dad from a shopping centre car park, prompted by a radio host who suggested calling the person you respect most simply to tell them why. That one phone call changed their relationship for good.

These are not small stories…they are the whole point. The score was never the thing that carried any of us. The people were.

That is the relief Athan keeps coming back to, and it is why he frames so much of his thinking around what he calls his thirty thousand days.

You get the first ten thousand to find yourself, the next ten thousand to build something, and the last to slow down.

Most people, he says, do very little before thirty, and that is not a failure; it is just the shape of real life. All the best people he knows found themselves later, which means changing direction at forty or fifty or sixty is not risky at all.

It is brave.

His own mum has started from zero again and again, as a shoemaker, a dressmaker, a cake maker, each time happy to know nothing and learn.

Knowing nothing is okay, he said, and you could feel a generation of pressure lift slightly as he said it.

We will leave you with the line he offered for the parents listening, because it holds everything we believe at More Than a Score:

• Support always. It is not the end of the world, and he is the testament to that.

• There is more than one pathway out there, and a young person who feels behind today may be on a side street, still moving, still getting somewhere.

• You are more than a score, and there is no one path.

If this is the kind of conversation you want more of, subscribe to the More Than a Score here to get our newest episode, article, or resource straight to you.

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And if a parent or a young person you know needs to hear that a wobbly start is not a wasted life, send this to them. It might be the thing that helps them keep moving.

Dan

More Than a Score Co-Host

Dan Steele is a former educator, award-winning school leader, and co-host of More Than a Score, the podcast for parents, young people, and educators rethinking what success actually means.

What do you want to be?

I had no idea. I looked around the room. Other students were writing something. I wrote something too, eventually, something that sounded plausible…I’m fairly certain it was something like a marine biologist, landscape architect, or psychologist to sound smart and, really, just fill in the box. I can’t completely remember the exact thing I wrote down, but I do remember the feeling: that the question had a right answer, and I was already behind.

I’ve been thinking about that moment for a long time. And lately, after a series of conversations on More Than a Score that I didn’t expect to be quite so illuminating, I’ve been thinking about it differently.

Because the question has a structural problem, it asks for a noun. The honest answer is almost always a verb. And, probably more than one.

The question that closes

“What do you want to be?” presents a career as an identity, a fixed destination to aim at, arrive at, and then inhabit. It asks a young person to commit, to narrow, to choose. There’s a logic to it. Schools need to organise subjects. Universities need to allocate places. Systems need decisions that can be processed at scale.

But here’s what the question does on the inside of a sixteen-year-old: it asks them to know something they cannot possibly know yet.

Josh Kinder has changed careers, countries, and schools more times than most people change jobs. When I spoke with him on the podcast, he described adaptability not as a personality trait but as the skill that has made everything else possible. He couldn’t have told you at sixteen what he’d end up doing. That wasn’t a failure of planning. That’s simply how a well-lived working life tends to unfold.

Josh didn’t know what he wanted to be. He knew what he was interested in. He kept following that, changing direction when something stopped working, staying curious when it didn’t. What looked like instability from the outside was, from the inside, a method.

The young person who can name a destination at sixteen and follow a straight line to it is the exception, not the rule. We’ve built an entire system around the exception.

What did you want to be at sixteen? How close is that to what you actually do now?

The question that opens

Tyson Day is a careers counsellor and public speaker, which means he has spent more time than most thinking about how young people make decisions about their futures. His answer, when I asked him what skill mattered most for the world young people are entering, was immediate.

Curiosity.

Not confidence, not resilience, not the ability to perform well in interviews. Curiosity, the quality of staying interested, of asking the next question, of following an idea to see where it leads.

The question that cultivates curiosity sounds quite different from the question we’ve been asking. It sounds more like: What do you keep coming back to, even when nobody’s watching? Or: What kind of problem do you actually enjoy sitting with?

These aren’t career counselling scripts. They’re conversations. And the young person who learns to ask them of themselves is, in Tyson’s view, far better positioned for what’s ahead than the one who picked a destination at sixteen and stopped looking.

What we ask shapes what a young person believes they’re allowed to answer.

When the answer becomes who you are

TJ Weistra spent years as an elite badminton player. When he left the sport, a decision that took years to arrive at and didn’t get easier, he encountered something nobody had prepared him for. Without the sport, he wasn’t sure who he was.

The identity and the destination had merged. When one went, so did the other.

TJ’s story isn’t about regret. It’s about what happens when a young person answers “What do you want to be?” with a single, specific response. It can become load-bearing because when the career becomes the identity, a shift in the career doesn’t feel like a practical problem. It feels like a personal one.

Listening to him, something landed for me. Because this happens, at a lower intensity, to thousands of students year on year. They pick a path, commit to it, build their sense of self around it. When the path changes, and it always does in some way for the wide, wide majority, the disruption reads as failure.

It isn’t. But nobody said so at the time.

A different question

This isn’t an argument for abandoning the careers conversation. Not at all! Young people still need to make choices. Schools still need to organise curricula and some structure is necessary.

But the question we lead with matters.

It shapes what a young person thinks is possible, what kind of thinking they practise, and what they do when the destination looks different up close.

So, instead, let’s consider one small thing.

Next time the question comes up, at the dinner table, in a school night conversation, in a form that needs filling in, try pausing before it lands. Try something else instead.

What are you curious (or wondering) about right now? What did you spend time on this week that you didn’t have to? What kind of problem do you like sitting with?

The answers won’t fit neatly in a box. You may have to tweak them to suit you and your young person, but they’ll tell you something real. And they’ll give the young person something the original question rarely does: permission to not know yet, while staying genuinely interested anyway.

That, it turns out, is a much better place to start.

Dan

More Than a Score Co-Host

Dan Steele is a former educator, award-winning school leader, and co-host of More Than a Score — a podcast for parents, young people, and educators rethinking what success actually means.

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What if the qualities that make you different at school are actually the qualities that help you thrive later in life?

In this episode of More Than a Score, we sit down with Sarah Poun (known to many as Wholesome by Sarah), a nutritionist, author, entrepreneur, educator, mum of three...and someone whose journey is a powerful reminder that success doesn't always follow the path you expect.

Sarah's school experience was shaped by strong friendships, curiosity, and a love of connecting with people. While she achieved a score she was proud of, she was never the student who lived for study, exams, or academic recognition. In fact, one of the most common comments on her report cards was simple: "Sarah talks too much."

Looking back, that trait wasn't a weakness at all. It became one of the foundations of a career built on communication, connection, storytelling, teaching, and creating a community around food, family, and wellbeing.

Throughout this conversation, Sarah reflects on the adults who believed in her, the moments she was told she couldn't do something, the confidence that comes from proving yourself wrong, and the many pivots that have shaped her career, from nutrition and teaching to publishing, content creation, and building Wholesome by Sarah.

This is a conversation about backing yourself, embracing change, and recognising that there is no single path to success. It's a reminder that we don't all learn, think, or shine in the same way, and reassurance that your future isn't limited by how neatly you fit into a classroom. And, for anyone navigating change, Sarah's story is a powerful example of what can happen when you trust your strengths, even when they don't look conventional.

🎧 What You'll Discover In this episode:

• Why Sarah never worried too much about being the "perfect student"

• How being told she talked too much eventually became a professional strength

• The role friendships, connection, and community played during her school years

• What happened when she was told she wouldn't be able to manage a Year 12 subject early

• How proving people wrong became a powerful source of motivation

• Why different learners don't always thrive in traditional classroom environments

• The impact of supportive parents who encouraged effort without applying pressure • Sarah's journey through multiple careers, pivots, and reinventions

• What building Wholesome by Sarah has taught her about backing herself

• Why success isn't about following the expected path

• A reassuring message for parents raising children with different strengths and personalities

• How to recognise and nurture qualities that may not always be rewarded at school

In the words of Sarah: it's a cracker of an episode!

Know someone with an interesting or unique pathway? Tell us about it via an email to morethanascorepod@gmail.com or DM on Insta at @morethanascorepod.

More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning school leader based on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Each week, we share honest stories about school, ATAR pressure, career pathways, parenting teenagers, and what success really means after school. New episodes weekly.

What if success is less about getting it right the first time and more about staying open to opportunity? Stephanie Pahl is an athlete, captain, coach, and fitness professional whose confidence and identity came through sport, teamwork, and belonging rather than academic accolades.

Since school, her path has wound through university course changes, coaching, high-performance sport, and the fitness industry. It is a conversation about accepting change, trying different things, and understanding that progress does not need to be perfectly planned.

For parents, it is a reminder that success is not one size fits all, and not loving school does not mean your child is behind.

What you’ll discover:

• When school doesn’t reflect your child’s strongest qualities

• How sport, teamwork and belonging build a young person’s identity

• Why not loving school doesn’t define your child’s future

• Changing university course and finding a new direction

• Building adaptability and resilience through change

• Shifting the measure of success from results to fulfilment

More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning school leader based on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. Each fortnight, we share honest stories about school, ATAR pressure, career pathways, parenting teenagers, and what success really means after school. New episodes fortnightly.

conversation will help. Note: It briefly discusses suicide, so please choose what feels right for you.

What happens when the thing you worked so hard to achieve makes you question what success even means? Melissa Lozanovski is an educator, leader, former founding principal, and mum.

At school, she compared herself to academically high-achieving siblings and carried quiet pressure to measure up. She entered teaching young, led early, and built a new school from the ground up, while privately navigating grief, burnout, and a health scare that forced harder questions about what matters.

Her framework of becoming, belonging, and lifelong learning offers parents a hopeful way to think about success beyond grades, titles, and recognition, and why every child’s path unfolds differently.

🎧 What you’ll discover:

• How comparison with siblings and peers shapes a child’s confidence

• Why one adult believing in a young person changes everything

• The emotional weight that can sit behind outward success

• Protecting wellbeing while chasing achievement

• Why belonging and emotional safety matter for growth

• Thinking about success beyond grades and titles

Know someone with a unique story or path? Share it with us at morethanascorepod@gmail.com!

If this conversation brings anything up for you, support is available:

• Lifeline Australia (24/7): https://www.lifeline.org.au or 13 11 14

• Beyond Blue: https://www.beyondblue.org.au or 1300 22 46 36

• Kids Helpline (for people aged 5–25): https://kidshelpline.com.au or 1800 55 1800

More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning school leader on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. New episodes fortnightly. Subscribe to follow along.

a reassurance that they are not behind. It is for any parent worried about the missing plan.

What if success was never about the perfect plan, but learning to adapt when the plan

changes?

Ben Amos is a teacher turned entrepreneur and digital storyteller who built his career

by staying curious and figuring things out as he went. The path he first wanted did not work out, teaching became the fallback, and that backup became the foundation of a career spanning education, entrepreneurship, and creativity.

Ben reframes failure as feedback, draws a line between passively hoping and actively creating opportunities, and shows why adaptability can matter more than certainty. If your child has not figured it all out yet, this will help you breathe.

🎧 What You’ll Discover In this episode:

• Why a school score doesn’t define your child’s future

• How a fallback plan can become a launching pad

• Helping teenagers handle real responsibility

• Why adaptability matters more than certainty after school

• Reframing failure as feedback, not a final verdict

• Supporting a child who has no clear plan yet

More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning school leader on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. New episodes fortnightly. Subscribe to follow along.

never the real story. It is a reassurance for any parent advocating for a child who learns

differently.

Called lazy, placed on the lowest table, and told she would not succeed. The truth was very different. Myfanwy (Van) Fitzpatrick struggled at school not because she lacked ability, but because her dyslexia and dyspraxia went undiagnosed.

She absorbed those early labels into her identity for years. Then, despite being written off, she completed multiple university degrees, became a teacher and moved into counselling.

This is a conversation about how labels shape a child, the hidden impact of undiagnosed learning differences, and the critical role parents play in advocating when the system gets it wrong. Intelligence is not the grade you get.

What you’ll discover:

• What to do when your child is called lazy at school

• Signs of undiagnosed dyslexia and dyspraxia in school

• How early labels shape a child’s identity and confidence

• The turning point of finally being diagnosed and understood

• How to advocate for a child who learns differently

• Why intelligence is not the grade you get

More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning school leader on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. New episodes fortnightly. Subscribe to follow along.

What does it look like to navigate school, life, and identity when the path is not clear? If your teenager left school without a clear sense of what success looks like for them, they are far more normal than they feel.

For Jasper Nettlefold, school often felt like a minefield, something to get through rather than connect with. He left without a clear plan and without a strong sense of what he wanted. If that sounds familiar, either for you or your child, this conversation will land.

What followed for Jasper was not a perfectly mapped journey. It was a series of experiences through sport, different jobs, travel, and relationships that gradually built his confidence, perspective, and sense of who he was.

Success, in his story, was not handed to him at the end of school. It was shaped slowly through the choices he made, the people he surrounded himself with, and his willingness to keep moving even when he was unsure where it was all heading.

We explore what it feels like when school does not quite fit, why not having a plan after school is far more common than most families assume, and how everyday jobs and experiences can quietly build identity and confidence. Jasper is open about the role of mentors and relationships, and about how comparison to others can hold a young person back from finding their own definition of success.

For parents, there is a clear and gentle message: you can support your child without forcing a path. For students and anyone who did not follow a straight line, this is reassurance that taking a different route does not mean falling behind. You do not need to have it all figured out. You just need to keep moving forward and trust that it will come together.

What you’ll discover:

• When school doesn’t fit and feels like something to get through

• Why having no plan after school is more common than you think

• How everyday jobs and experiences build confidence and identity

• The role of mentors and relationships in finding direction

• Supporting your child without forcing a path

• Why taking a different route is not falling behind

More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning school leader on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. New episodes fortnightly. Subscribe to follow along.

For many people, these labels were never spoken aloud. They didn’t need to be. They lived in the look from a teacher when an exam came back. In the subjects you weren’t steered toward. In the quiet, well-meaning advice that nudged you away from certain dreams before you even knew you had them.

And here’s the thing about those labels: they have very long shelf lives.

You can be forty-three years old, running something you built yourself, raising a family, contributing genuinely to the people and communities around you, and still feel a small, persistent flicker of that old verdict whenever someone asks where you went to university, or what you studied, or what your score was.

Our most recent conversation on More Than a Score, with Lael Stone, is one of those episodes that puts that weight right on the table and asks: what if the label was always wrong?

The Story the Score Tells — And What It Leaves Out

Lael’s pathway doesn’t fit the conventional template. She left school without putting much stock in her final score. At seventeen, she travelled overseas alone. She started businesses before she had a business plan, built a body of work around connection, healing, and helping families…and eventually created a school.

But what struck us most wasn’t the impressive list of things Lael has done. It was how honest she was about the inner experience along the way.

She spoke, directly and without performance, about feeling not smart enough. About the specific feeling that comes when you don’t have formal qualifications in a world that treats formal qualifications as the only legitimate proof of capability.

“I felt not smart enough because I didn’t have formal qualifications.” — Lael Stone

That line deserves to sit for a moment.

Because Lael was not describing a lack of intelligence, she was describing what happens when a system built around one narrow definition of ability - grades, scores, academic performance - becomes the measuring stick that people internalise long after they’ve left the building.

She was describing what so many of our guests have described, in different words, across dozens of conversations: the gap between what a score said, and what a life turned out to be.

The Two Things That Kept Moving Her Forward

When we asked Lael what had carried her through the uncertainty, the unconventional path, the moments of self-doubt, she offered two words.

Courage. And passion.

Not a five-year plan. Not a clear destination. Not a score that unlocked the right doors.

Courage, as Lael described it, is not the absence of fear or doubt. It is the willingness to keep moving anyway. To try things before you know how they’re supposed to be done. To ask for help. To start something imperfect.

And passion. Not as a fixed, singular calling you’re either born with or not, but as a kind of energy that points you toward certain things and keeps you returning to them even when progress is slow.

These are not flashy ideas. They are deeply practical ones. And they are almost entirely absent from the way most schools talk about preparation for life after Year 12.

“If you didn’t know how it was supposed to be done, how would you do it? That question contains more learning than most exam papers.” - Laura

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For the Parents Reading This

If you are raising a young person who doesn’t seem to thrive in the conventional system, who loses energy in certain classrooms, who comes alive outside of formal learning, who collects detentions instead of distinctions, this conversation is worth your time.

Not because it will solve anything immediately. But because it offers a different frame.

Lael’s story is a reminder that some people are not broken by school. They are simply not designed for the particular shape of it. And the task for parents isn’t to force the fit. It’s to help young people understand that the shape of their life doesn’t have to match the shape of the system.

That requires a particular kind of parenting courage, too.

It means resisting the urge to translate every difference into a deficit. It means being curious about what your child is drawn to, rather than anxious about what they’re avoiding. It means holding space for pathways that don’t have a clear name yet.

And it means being willing to say out loud: there is more than one way to build a good life, and I believe you can find yours.

For the Adults Who Carry Old Labels

This section is for the people who are not in their final year of school anymore but who still, occasionally, feel like they are.

If you left school with a story about yourself that wasn’t entirely flattering. If someone, somewhere along the way, gave you the impression that you were not quite the right kind of smart. If you’ve spent years building something real while simultaneously doubting whether it counts.

This is what Lael’s story suggests: lived experience is a form of learning. Years of doing the work, of staying curious, of building and adapting and trying again — these are not a consolation prize for missing formal qualifications. They are, in many cases, a more demanding and more durable education.

The problem is not that your pathway was wrong. The problem is that we built a language of success that could only describe one pathway, and called everything else a deviation.

You were not the deviation. You were just following a map that the system hadn’t printed yet.

Play, Curiosity, and the Things School Forgets to Value

One of the threads that runs through Lael’s episode, and through so many of our best conversations, is the quiet argument for play and curiosity as serious educational values.

Not play as a break from learning. Play as learning. Curiosity as the engine that keeps people moving when external motivation runs out.

These are qualities that flourish in certain environments and get quietly extinguished in others. And the tragedy is that by the time many young people finish school, they’ve learned to feel vaguely embarrassed by both.

The students who remain most curious, who ask questions nobody expected, who want to go deeper on the thing that isn’t on the exam, are often the ones most likely to be described as difficult, distracted, or not living up to their potential.

What if that curiosity is not a problem to be managed?

What if it is, in fact, the most important thing to protect?

Rewriting the Story

Lael eventually came to a place where she could see her pathway clearly — not despite its unconventional shape, but because of it. She recognised that lived experience, deep learning, and years of genuine doing had built something real. Something that didn’t need a formal institution to verify it.

That recognition didn’t happen overnight. It required a kind of internal archaeology: going back through the evidence of your own life and reading it differently. Seeing the initiative where you used to see only the absence of credentials. Seeing the resilience where you used to see only the chaos.

This is not a simple or painless process. But it is a possible one.

And it often begins with something seemingly small: a conversation, a book, an episode of a podcast that reflects a different story back to you.

We hope this is one of those.

Dan & Laura

Listen to the full conversation with Lael Stone: The Courage to Find Your Own Way via our link or wherever you get your podcasts.

We publish real, honest conversations, practical articles, reflections, and resources alongside our episodes — all designed to help you rethink success, have better conversations, and support the young people around you.

More Than a Score

A podcast and book project for parents, students, and educators who believe that no single number defines a person’s worth, future, or potential.

If you have ever worried that your child does not fit the traditional mould, this is a hopeful, practical listen for parents and educators alike.

What happens when school does not quite fit, but life beyond it opens something bigger? Lael Stone is a speaker, educator, author, and school founder who reflects on leaving school without being defined by her score, traveling overseas alone at seventeen, and starting businesses before she had it all figured out.

This is a conversation about what becomes possible when young people are given permission to explore, and adults choose connection over judgment. Lael offers practical insight on how young people actually ask for help, why vulnerability matters, and what it takes to become a safe adult in a young person’s world.

• Why a school score never has to define your child

• Helping a young person who feels not smart at school

• Travel and real-world experience as a different education

• What stops teenagers asking for help, and how to lower the barrier

• How to become a safe adult in a young person’s world

• Building learning around connection and emotional safety

Know someone who’d be perfect for the pod? Get in touch with us at morethanascorepod@gmail.com.

More Than a Score: Redefining Success Beyond School is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former teacher and award-winning school leader on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. New episodes fortnightly. Subscribe to follow along.

Although I’m currently a parent of primary-aged children and haven’t experienced this year from that side of the table, I have lived it many times before. As a student some twenty years ago (no need to dwell on the exact number, thanks), and as a teacher who has sat beside hundreds of students over my 18-year career.

I’m not here to tell you exactly how this year will unfold for you because, of course, we are all navigating our own unique circumstances. No one year looks the same.

However, some patterns recur, and I’d like to share two key ways you can feel a little more prepared together.

(And, critically, realise you’re not alone in all that entails Year 12).

Riding the Wave of Assessments

In my experience, assessments arrive in waves. No matter how many times teachers and faculty heads are asked to schedule dates so everything doesn’t land at once, I have never taught a year where students didn’t end up with several assessments occurring within the same fortnight (or week at its worst).

My advice is simple: when the quieter weeks hit, and you feel like you can breathe, don’t treat this as time off. Treat them as preparation time.

What assessments are coming up? How can you break your available time into smaller blocks to do the foundational work that will set you up when the wave begins to rise because it will.

Having too much to do without the resources to tackle it all can feel overwhelming. Time is one of the biggest resources you have, so learn to use it well.

One of the key ways preparation can occur is through practice exams or tasks. They not only help us see strengths and gaps, but also become familiar with the wording, layout and structure.

For the parents reading this who lived through the COVID lockdowns (I promise I won’t dwell on this—I know the anxiety might already be creeping in), do you remember when we all decided we wanted—no, needed—to make sourdough bread?

Throughout those long days, we realised you can’t make sourdough without a starter. You have to create it, nurture it, and give it time before you can bake the bread itself.

That sourdough starter is like the foundation of Year 12. Students, you must build consistent habits early. Lay the groundwork so that when the tough weeks hit (think: five assessments and a portfolio deadline all happening at once), you already have the systems in place to support you.

Intentional Support

Imagine you’re on a hike across rugged terrain. You’ve packed the right snacks, you’re wearing good walking shoes that won’t give you blisters, and your drink bottle is full.

You’re prepared.

But while you’re admiring the view, you trip and fall.

Not just a small stumble where you graze your knee—because you packed a first aid kit for that. Instead, you fall into a deep hole you cannot climb out of.

You’re at the bottom, alone, and nothing in your pack can help you escape. All you can do is call out and hope that someone walking the same path hears you and can help you out.

At some point during the Year 12 journey, many students feel like they’re in that hole.

Perhaps you’re a parent watching your child lose motivation, and no matter what you say, they can’t seem to pull themselves out of the slump. Or maybe you’re a student receiving disappointing marks one after another and beginning to wonder if there’s any point in continuing to try.

These moments happen—often around Term 3. (I promise I have an article coming out later that is a deeper, and supportive, dive into that).

Without a support network around you, it can feel like you are forever stuck in that deep, dark hole.

My advice: start the year by intentionally building a network of people you can lean on. The kind of people who can handle your honesty, support you during the lows, and help carry some of the weight when things feel overwhelming.

How they show up and support may look slightly different, which is okay. The important part is that they do help, provide support, and are available when it’s needed.

As a high school teacher, I’m very aware that parents are not always part of the support network young people choose. This is normal. As much as we might wish we were the first choice, sometimes how we show support is to remove our ego, listen - really listen, not solve - and let them know we’re supporting our child’s decisions.

If it isn’t going to be a parent, students need to find strong support outside the home. A teacher you connect with is a great place to start. It could also be a friend who finished Year 12 recently, a manager from a part-time job, a sports coach, or a school counsellor. Support can come from many places.

The goal isn’t simply for these people to pull you out once you’re already in the hole—although they absolutely can.

Ideally, they’re the people who say, “Hey, there’s a big hole coming up. Let’s slow down and walk around it.”

Or, when we are deep in it, there may be someone who can climb in alongside us, be there and then help us see possibilities for how we can climb back out.

Support networks help us recognise warning signs early. They notice when something isn’t quite right and help us adjust before the situation becomes overwhelming.

So if you’re beginning this year feeling alone or stressed—whether as a parent or a student—start building your support network now. Choose to act and reach out to those trusted people. This journey is much easier when you have others alongside you, not on your own.

There will likely be bumps, disappointments, moments that feel like failures, and times when everything is due at once. But with the right habits, people and perspectives, this year can

also be one of learning, growth, and success - in all its various forms.

Laura Pitt

Former High School Teacher & Co-Host of More Than a Score