Just how important is that OP score?

Introduced in 1992, the Overall Position (OP) is a tertiary entrance rank used in Queensland for selection into universities. Akin to comparable systems used throughout the rest of Australia, the OP shows how well a student has performed compared to all other OP-eligible students in Queensland.

The night before last, the state’s OP scores were released to frightened, excited and anxious high school graduates all over our state. Slack, slipshod mother that I am, I was unaware of this fact and it wasn’t until late yesterday that seventeen year old daughter Lulu, sombrely informed me of her result.

Let down and dissatisfied, she confidentially requested of her big-mouthed mother to, “Please don’t tell anyone what I got.”

I looked at her final school report which had arrived in the mail while I was away last week.

There was certainly nothing to be ashamed of.

She’d passed everything including top level Mathematics, Chemistry and Biology which her recalcitrant, algebra-challenged mother would have had no hope in hell of accomplishing. (In fact it just took me five goes at spelling ‘recalcitrant’ correctly.)

“Seven per cent in Mathematics!” screeched my own mother when she perused my GRADE TEN report back in the day. I’d earned seven points out of one hundred on my final test, although I must add I’d been placed twentieth in a class of thirty students even with that miserable result. Let’s just say Mathematics was not my forte but I do feel our teacher may have had some questions to answer. I dropped Maths in grade eleven and twelve as it wasn’t compulsory back then and even now still scratch my head at long division.
Lulu has a high enough score to get into the science degree she wants to do and that’s good enough for me. 

Sure… if there’d been less partying; less boy stuff, less Facebook, I’m sure she could have done better, but perhaps it has all been an effective lesson in life for her.

You know, 

Padraic (eighteen year old son), on the other hand, went down the Vocational Education Training (VET) road in grade eleven and twelve so he wasn’t eligible for an OP score.

Imagine my amazement when I received a text from my friend Kyles last night,

“Holy shite!!!!! Padraic got an OP 4. Congrats! All those English assignments you did for him paid off.”

I checked his Facebook page and sure enough he’d posted “OP4 :)”  on his timeline.

Nice and subtle like...



He had over eighty ‘likes’ on the post. Cheeky little bugger.