kami - i wish i knew you could enrol at more than one TAFE. i have been at hornsby this year doing 3 subjects, repeating from last year, and i wanted to do a 4th ( pdhpe ) but hornsby didnt have it.. i would have enrolled at meadowbank aswell if i knew i could!!!
as for TAFE, it is a good place to do your HSC, its all the same as school, but your right it is an open learning environment. they dont make you come to class, or do any work outside of classes. which is why you have to be able to APPLY yourself strongly to do as well as possible, so many people at my TAFE turn up to maybe one class a week, which is almost pointless.
TAFE classes are longer than school classes, a biology lesson will go for 3 hours at TAFE, and you will have 2 a week, and english n maths lessons vary from 2-3 hour classes, although its always up to you for how long you want to stay there for.
the teachers you call by their first name, it is a totally different atmosphere than school, some of my teachers gave me their phone number incase i needed any information throughout the year at any time. and they have stressed to make sure that you call them if you need help this time of year. they do want you to get the best marks possible,
at TAFE they have to teach you the preliminary course and HSC course in 9 months. which makes it hard for some of the larger courses.. biology we finished our syllabus 15 minutes after our last lesson time finished.(2 weeks ago :|!!) but in english we did not go through the prelimanary course at all. in maths they worked the prelim course into the HSC course. there were two text books, prelim and hsc so we worked one sylabus topic in our prelim book, and then continued onto the HSC book. was fine.
i think its a good option if you feel you can do better and if you can apply yourself for another year.. im surprised i managed to, but ive come in the top 1% of the state in maths and english with my internal mark ( they tell you at TAFE wat they send to BOS) and raised my biology mark by 30 from last year. althoguh last year i didnt go to many classes!