What if a score that’s higher than you hoped for could actually work against you? This episode is for any parent, or any young person, who has ever felt boxed in by a number, or quietly written off at school, and it’s a reminder that being good at school and being set up for a good life are not the same thing. In this episode of More Than a Score, we sit down with Brendan James Murray: award-winning author of four books, high-school English teacher, and dad of two. Brendan’s story starts somewhere surprising. He spent almost a year as a “school refuser” in grade four, an anxiety he wouldn’t understand for decades, and was the kind of quiet kid who can drift out of a teacher’s thinking entirely. He leaned into reading and writing because that’s where he felt capable, and ended up with a score far higher than he expected. But that number brought its own pressure. Feeling he had to “spend it in the right way,” he chose a science degree that matched the score rather than his passion, and dropped out within weeks. What followed was a slower, truer path: studying writing because he loved it, moving into teaching, and eventually publishing The Drowned Man, which won the Ned Kelly Award for Best True Crime. Now, as both a teacher handing out scores and an author writing against them, he sits on every side of the scoreboard at once. For parents, it’s a warm, honest conversation about not writing kids off, resisting the urge to steer them by prestige, and asking what a good life actually looks like. For young people, it’s proof that a quiet start, or a wrong turn, doesn’t decide where you end up. What you’ll discover in this episode • Why a score higher than expected can feel like a trap rather than a win • The idea of an ATAR as “currency” you feel obliged to spend, and where that leads • Why a former “school refuser” can still be a capable, successful student, and what that should teach us • How the quiet kids drift below the radar, and why that’s worth resisting • The difference between choosing subjects for prestige, for a career, or because your friends are • Why Brendan believes universities, not schools, should carry more of the admissions burden • What he wishes parents knew about subject selection and the “you’ll need maths later” myth • Why imagination vanishes from the curriculum after grade two, and how to keep it alive at home • The role of empathy and discipline in both great teaching and great writing • Why the craft of writing still matters in the age of AI, and the difference between imagining and generating More Than a Score is hosted by Laura Pitt and Dan Steele, a former secondary teacher and a former award-winning assistant principal, on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, with over 35 years in education between them. New episodes fortnightly. Subscribe and follow the show to hear each new conversation as it lands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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