Matthew,
I did the course last year, and signed up for 1 year (i.e., yr 11), so we did BAK, and if I had continued this year we would have done Met&Nav. The course is designed very well, and don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, it
is a high workload during it, and at times it can be hard to lessen it's priority in light of other subjects. I assume you are doing the same course structure (BAK first year, Met&Nav second year, other way around if you opt to do full 2 years from the beginning).
I dropped the course for two reasons:
the first is that at my school, going to Ultimo Tafe each tuesday requires you to miss out on 4 periods a cycle in order to do tafe. 1 of these four periods was a english extension 1, of which I only have 4 periods a cycle anyway. and I also missed out on maths ext1, which also proved to be difficult.
The second reason is due to major works and simply the work load. yr12 has a lot more work than yr11 (obviously...), but the fact I am doing english ext2 and history extension means that i need to spend a alot of time working on major works, and for me getting home at 7pm on a tuesday night, absolutely stuffed from taking apart a navajo's engine wasn't always the best feeling.
Now, this is just my situation, and I assume yours will be different. The TAFE course is a brilliant thing to do, and it allows you to keep some scope in your schooling for and ultimate aviation-goals you may have. Term 4 of year11 (where we don't have tafe as the yr12's are doing those silly little exams) secured my thought that I would do better if I did not do tafe, and it was only in the first week back this year when I dropped TAFE (I had 14 units at that point, which is fine as TAFE isn't a super-high workload, but it just takes a chunk out of other subjects. majority of yr12's in my course last year were doing maths or physics during TAFE...).
Nigel, the course is "Aviation Operations and Theory". it works around the BAK syllabus which TAFE writes specifically for full-time students, time-altered for tvet's. It's not a flying course, however at my TAFE there were IFR Sim's and synthetic trainers.
http://www.sit.nsw.edu.au/courses/se...a_Index_ID=513
That is the TAFE course, TVET is slightly smaller, but runs on the same principles. It is Board Endorsed C Category, which means passes in it result in a credits towards your Higher School Certificate, but do not count towards a UAI. There are 2 types of passing: the first is just by having an 80% attendance record, and the other is at the TAFE's discretion, which for us was a pass of 85% of higher in all examinations.
I hope you enjoy the course, Matt. It's an enjoyable thing to do, and you get some good contacts through it and some excellent ideas and strategies for future employment in whatever field you're looking at. Always keep in mind, though, that TAFE comes second to other parts of school, and that was the first point stressed to us a year ago when I first started: If you want a UAI, study for UAI subjects, not for TAFE.
Nick