If you had it you would know. Basically there are three kinds, oral, verbal and motor. Motor can then be broken down into fine and gross motor. It is motor that would most effect HSC students.
A person with gross motor will be uncoordinated, probably have trouble with balance, perform poorly at sports etc. They will probably have had trouble catching or kicking a ball, or learning to ride a bike as a kid. Most of the time they know what to do and can tell you how, but somehow the message from the brain to the limb performing the action gets scrambled.
A person with fine motor will be slow at learning to write, writing will be messy, they will probably have had problems with letter reversals, their spelling won't be great and often will misspell the same word differently, even in the same paragraph. They will most likely have taken ages to learn to tie shoe laces, and even now given an option will choose shoes without laces.
They have poor time management, their concept of time isn't great, they're the kid who will come in an hour late, not because they are being defiant, but because they honestly didn't realise the time was getting away. They find it hard to plan essays and will often leave things out or will have limited detail.
The trouble is they are often quite bright and their oral ability is far greater than their written ability. They do well on viva -voces. If you ask them to talk to you about a particular essay question, they probably know and can tell you a great deal. There the type of person you think of as smart, because they usually have something insightful to say and usually know their stuff, when they're talking. However, this seems to get lost when they have to write essays. Short answer isn't so bad. You will probably find some of the people who are being derided for applying for special provisions for "messy handwriting" are actually dyspraxic. It's usually not that their handwriting is messy per se but that there is a large gap between what's in their head and their ability to get it on paper. They can usually think a lot faster than they are capable of writing (unless you want illegible scrawl). These people can benefit from a bit longer to plan or to execute the writing.
As they get older most kids either grow out of the gross motor/fine motor problems to some extent or learn to compensate. E.G. they won't play sports, but will prefer to walk for exercise, they use computers for writing (especially spell checker!) they end up in careers where they do all the talking and someone else does most of the writing.
The problems that remain obvious are the time awareness, time management, essay planning and execution, attention to detail.
