Bright students let down by limited subject offerings
It is one of the year's most popular stories with our readers, who follow along on our live blog as students across the state open their results, learning the fruits of their study of the material – the theorems, the Shakespeares – they have immersed themselves in for two years.
For the HSC class of 2027, the process begins now. Across the state, tens of thousands of year 10 students are poring over course guides, deciding which units they will take through to their final years of schooling.
Today, the Herald is publishing its first in a series of stories about HSC subject selection.
In today's story, education reporter Emily Kowal is looking at the bigger picture: subject availability across the state, and how it can affect students' results.
Various factors – the size of a school's cohort, teacher qualifications, school infrastructure – affect what HSC subjects a school can offer.
As the Herald has previously reported extensively, these inequalities mean subject availability is more limited in regional, rural and low socio-economic schools.
Last year, 14 per cent of students in major cities achieved a top band result in their HSC, compared with just 2 per cent of students in outer regional or remote parts of NSW.
Data shows the majority of HSC students who study advanced and extension versions of their courses, including maths, English, science and history, score in the top two HSC bands. Last year, English Ext 1 had the highest proportion of students scoring an E4 band, with 41 per cent of students achieving a top score.
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Sydney Morning Herald
5 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The HSC science subject in which most students get a top band
As Mitchell Burriss moved from year 11 to year 12, he faced a dilemma. The passionate chemistry student and Fort Street High School pupil found, to his surprise, he was not enjoying physics. Enter science extension, the subject introduced in 2018 as part of a state government effort to supercharge interest in the sciences and find the 'next Nobel prize winner'. 'The idea of being able to do science extension was presented to me in an interesting way,' said Burriss, who decided to drop physics and take up the one-unit extension course. 'From that day forward, I thought – it's a way to take three-unit chemistry.' Burriss, whose major project investigated the sustainability of using different alkali metals in batteries, came fourth in the state in the subject last year, and he's not the only high achiever. In 2024, 81.6 per cent of students got a band E3 or E4 in the subject, a number that has been steadily rising since the first set of results in 2019. That might not be surprising. Like the other extension subjects, schools tend to encourage only the highest-achieving students to take the subject, and not all schools offer it – about 200 did in 2024. But science extension is still much less popular than its English or mathematics equivalents (just 754 students took it last year), suggesting plenty of talented student scientists may be overlooking it. Compared with the five two-unit science subjects, a much higher proportion of students achieve the top two bands. In the six years of results since science extension was introduced, the average percentage of students getting one of the top two grades was 75.4, while the other subjects ranged from 31.2 to 40 per cent. Chemistry and physics, taken by similar numbers of students, were the two-unit subjects where most students received one of the top two grades in that period. Biology, the most popular science subject, taken by about 19,000 year 12s last year, had an average of 31.3 per cent of students achieving a mark above 80, though results have been improving in the past two years.
The Age
5 days ago
- The Age
The HSC science subject in which most students get a top band
As Mitchell Burriss moved from year 11 to year 12, he faced a dilemma. The passionate chemistry student and Fort Street High School pupil found, to his surprise, he was not enjoying physics. Enter science extension, the subject introduced in 2018 as part of a state government effort to supercharge interest in the sciences and find the 'next Nobel prize winner'. 'The idea of being able to do science extension was presented to me in an interesting way,' said Burriss, who decided to drop physics and take up the one-unit extension course. 'From that day forward, I thought – it's a way to take three-unit chemistry.' Burriss, whose major project investigated the sustainability of using different alkali metals in batteries, came fourth in the state in the subject last year, and he's not the only high achiever. In 2024, 81.6 per cent of students got a band E3 or E4 in the subject, a number that has been steadily rising since the first set of results in 2019. That might not be surprising. Like the other extension subjects, schools tend to encourage only the highest-achieving students to take the subject, and not all schools offer it – about 200 did in 2024. But science extension is still much less popular than its English or mathematics equivalents (just 754 students took it last year), suggesting plenty of talented student scientists may be overlooking it. Compared with the five two-unit science subjects, a much higher proportion of students achieve the top two bands. In the six years of results since science extension was introduced, the average percentage of students getting one of the top two grades was 75.4, while the other subjects ranged from 31.2 to 40 per cent. Chemistry and physics, taken by similar numbers of students, were the two-unit subjects where most students received one of the top two grades in that period. Biology, the most popular science subject, taken by about 19,000 year 12s last year, had an average of 31.3 per cent of students achieving a mark above 80, though results have been improving in the past two years.
Sydney Morning Herald
7 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Bright students let down by limited subject offerings
Each December, a new cohort of graduating HSC students receive their final marks from their assessments and examinations across their chosen subjects. It is one of the year's most popular stories with our readers, who follow along on our live blog as students across the state open their results, learning the fruits of their study of the material – the theorems, the Shakespeares – they have immersed themselves in for two years. For the HSC class of 2027, the process begins now. Across the state, tens of thousands of year 10 students are poring over course guides, deciding which units they will take through to their final years of schooling. Today, the Herald is publishing its first in a series of stories about HSC subject selection. In today's story, education reporter Emily Kowal is looking at the bigger picture: subject availability across the state, and how it can affect students' results. Various factors – the size of a school's cohort, teacher qualifications, school infrastructure – affect what HSC subjects a school can offer. As the Herald has previously reported extensively, these inequalities mean subject availability is more limited in regional, rural and low socio-economic schools. Last year, 14 per cent of students in major cities achieved a top band result in their HSC, compared with just 2 per cent of students in outer regional or remote parts of NSW. Data shows the majority of HSC students who study advanced and extension versions of their courses, including maths, English, science and history, score in the top two HSC bands. Last year, English Ext 1 had the highest proportion of students scoring an E4 band, with 41 per cent of students achieving a top score.
