You're from Sefton eh? Well I was in the same position as you two years ago (I'm from the Sefton HS class of 06)! They promised that they would let some Standard people move up to Advanced if they did well in the Area of Study assessment task and vice versa for Advanced dropping down to Standard, but they fuckin' LIED. They made up all these
extremely lame (I emphasise EXTREMELY LAME) excuses to prevent me from getting in, despite the fact that I owned over 80% of the Advanced people in the Area of Study common assessment task and topped the grade in Year 11. They lied, probably because they wanted to make sure the Standard students weren't bludging.
I am pretty damn sure that the English faculty at the school is doing this because they simply cannot teach the Advanced course properly. All my friends who did Advanced did not learn a thing from the so-called teachers, in fact the stuff they taught was way off the requirements of the syllabus. Obviously, they'll deny this, but take my word from my experience that they cannot teach English for crap. I had to rely on my own textbooks/resources and tutoring notes to get through the HSC, and never even glimpsed at my school notes for revision. Their marking criteria is way off the HSC marking criteria. Of course, there are a bare few decent teachers who know what the HSC requires but that's like only 1 or 2 of them.
The people from my grade who 'escaped' to other schools after Year 10 and did Advanced scored high 80s and low 90s, - now that's an excellent result from them considering that they would have done Standard had they stayed at Sefton AND only the top 10-15 people who did Advanced at Sefton scored those kinds of marks that year. So basically, those guys who were about average at Sefton in English before they left to another school, were brought up to the HSC marks that were equivalent to the top few students at Sefton in Advanced. Now that's proof that Sefton has a screwed up English faculty.
Also, I believe sexism is playing is role in this. I don't know about you, but a lot more of the 'dumber' female students (including those who still don't know what context means) were somehow let into Advanced than any male students who scored way higher than them in Year 10 and Preliminary.
It seems that you'll probably end up doing Standard like me, because unforunately, they have the authority. I even consulted the BOS back then and to my disappointment, they said that the school has the authority. I guess you'll just have to accept it.
Don't worry too much, if you can get into the top 5, like I did, you'll be able to score a mid-high band 5 no problem, which is the best you can do for a decent result.
On a side note, I am intending to tutor English Standard for students like you (particularly Sefton students) come HSC time in term 4, perhaps you might be interested? lol